


Raised In Deep Water

by GilraenStormcrow (GilraenDernhelm)



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: AU, Alcohol Abuse, Angst, Bad Father figures, Bad Parenting, Dangerous things in the mist, Esgaroth, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Growing Up Together, Hurt/Comfort, Lake Town, Middle Earth, Origins fic, Powerful women and indeterminate men, Pre-Canon, Romance, Tragedy, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-06 17:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 29,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3142301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GilraenDernhelm/pseuds/GilraenStormcrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of one shots and two shots about Bard and his future wife as they grow up in Laketown. AU.</p><p>Author is taking a break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Shutters and the Window Panes.

**Author's Note:**

> In which Bard and Sigrun are eight.

An icy mist coming down from the Mountain made Sigrun’s yellow hair curl like autumn leaves while she chattered away without pausing for breath. Bard, scowling, pulled his coat tighter about himself and kept his eyes fixed on the Lake; hoping that his sullenness would encourage her to go away and bother someone else. He _was_ used to the sound of her chattering – the day she _stopped_ chattering would probably be the day she died – but today she was talking at about three times her usual speed, and worse, talking nonsense.

‘My da’s folk are noomeenorians,’ she was proudly declaiming; straightening her spine and strutting about like a little queen.

Bard sighed.

‘What’s a noomeenorian?’ he asked.

‘It’s like a _king_ ,’ Sigrun replied.

Bard thought about Sigrun’s da, and frowned.

‘Who says?’

‘My da says!’

Bard snorted with laughter.

‘I think your da’s a liar.’

‘He is not!’

‘So how do you _know_ that your da’s a king?’ Bard insisted.

Sigrun’s eyes were wide with conviction.

‘Because when my da opens his cupboard,’ she replied, ‘he has so much gold that it all comes falling out!’

‘Why’s he live here, then?’ Bard asked her.

Sigrun seemed thrown by that, and for a moment she stared at Bard with something like panic, her blue eyes widening into pools of crystal doubt.

‘Say again?’

‘Why’s he live here,’ Bard repeated, ‘if he has so much gold?’

‘How…’ Sigrun stuttered; trying and failing to sound defensive; ‘how much gold does _your_ da have?’

‘Dunno,’ Bard shrugged, ‘when _my_ da opens the cupboard, nought falls out but a lot of those three-pint barrels you can sometimes get at Golden Dragon.’

Sigrun folded her arms and hung her head; and began to rock back and forth on the balls of her feet. Bard waited for her to speak. She said nothing.

‘What’s the matter, Sig?’

Sigrun kept her eyes fixed pointedly on the ground, and folded her arms tighter; as though she were trying to rock herself to sleep.

‘Sig?’ Bard insisted; touching her shoulder.

Sigrun looked up at him, and picked up their conversation without replying.

‘My ma used to say that drink runs in families,’ she confidently pronounced, ‘like when people get brown eyes or blue eyes.’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Bard glowered; thinking of his own da; thinking of himself.

‘Of course it does, stupid,’ Sigrun plunged on; oblivious, ‘just look at _your_ family. We know that your da likes his drink, so if _his_ da did too, and _his_ da did afore, all the way back to the beginning, then we could suppose that if Girion liked getting drunk as often as your da does, it’s no wonder he couldn’t shoot straight.’

Bard dropped his hand.

‘Girion did _not_ like getting drunk!’ he shouted.

‘How do you know?’ Sigrun snapped, ‘did you know him?’

‘No, but –’

‘Then how do you know?’ Sigrun challenged.

‘Because he _did_ hit the dragon, you idiot!’ Bard yelled, ‘his arrow pierced the skin just beneath its – ’

Sigrun snorted in disdain; making a dismissive and imperious gesture with her right hand that wounded him to the quick.

‘My da says your da made that up to make himself feel better!’ she scoffed.

‘Then your da’s an idiot!’

‘Don’t you call my da an idiot!’

‘But he _is_ one!’ Bard shouted; his anger at her increasing by the second; ‘an idiot, a spendthrift, and a liar!’

‘Stop talking about my da like that!’ Sigrun growled.

‘Everyone knows that he can’t afford all those fancy clothes he buys for your stepma, OR all those stupid gold buttons on his clothes that he won’t even sell to buy _food_ –’

‘Shut up, Bard!’ Sigrun screamed at him.

‘– and just because he thinks he’s a stupid noomeeporian –’

‘Noomeenorian!’

‘– he thinks he doesn’t have to work for anything, and that other folk should be working for _him!_ ’ Bard exclaimed, ‘and as for all the _gold_ falling out of his cupboard: when people hear you talking about it, they _laugh_ at you, because they know you’re lying! Where is this gold? Where is it? It only exists in you and your da’s head; that’s where it is!’

Sigrun paused, and burst into tears.

Bard felt his anger drop out of the bottom of his stomach, to be replaced both by guilt and by thoughts of the trouble he would get into later as Sigrun slumped to her haunches and covered her face with her hands; weeping uncontrollably. It was a horrible sound: filled with sorrow and desperation; with words mumbled in between that he could not understand.

Bard had never felt so helpless in his life. He stood awkwardly at Sigrun’s side, arms folded, and waited for her to stop, or run away. She did neither. She just kept on crying, as though someone had hurt her; as though someone had stuck a knife in her and was pushing it deeper and deeper, as slowly as they could.

‘Sig,’ Bard said softly; praying that she would stop; ‘ _Sig_.’

She didn’t stop; and looking quickly around to ensure they were observed by no one, Bard sat down at her side and awkwardly patted her shoulder. She glanced at him and sniffled; a small smile curling her tiny lips. Then suddenly, her tummy rumbled; as noisily as Bard’s own did when there was no food to be had, and she shoved him viciously away from her; her pride coming into her mind again like the shame that was rising in her cheeks.

No sooner had that pride returned that she burst once more into tears with such misery that Bard began to entertain thoughts of pushing whoever was responsible for this into the canal.

‘ _Everything’s gone_ ,’ Sigrun sobbed, ‘everything, everything, they took _everything_.’

* * *

 

Bard sat alone at the kitchen table, staring gravely at the two mildewed armchairs next to the fire. His da sat snoring and stinking in one of them with half a flagon of ale still clutched in his hand. Sigrun was curled up and snoring gently in the other; the tiny mug of wine Ma had forced her to drink sending her sleep without dreams.

Early that morning Sigrun’s da had lost a fortune to some idiot at Golden Dragon. When he had realised what had happened, he had tried to win it back.

By the time he had finished trying, he had had no house left. Even the window panes were gone, and by midday, so was he.

‘We have to help her,’ Bard had told his ma.

‘Her father will turn up,’ Ma had said, ‘he always does.’

‘She’s better off without him,’ Bard had snarled.

‘Really?’ Ma had asked him, ‘would you be better off without _your_ da?’

Bard had glanced sternly across the room at his snoring father, and the only thing he had felt had been a hardness inside: a love that was like hate.

The fire was burning low now. Ma had gone to bed half an hour ago, but Bard still felt as awake as he might have been at midday. He kept thinking about the window panes. How much coin had they gotten for taking the window panes?

He glanced towards their own windows. No glass there. Just shutters. And yet, his family had a house. He knew where his ma and da were. He wasn’t alone.

Bard looked back towards Sigrun, and saw that she was awake; the fire turning her hair the colour of gold.

She looked at him for a long time without speaking.

‘I’m sorry I called your da a drunk,’ she mumbled eventually.

Bard glanced briefly at his snoring father.

‘My da _is_ a drunk,’ he replied.

‘Then I’m sorry I called Girion a drunk,’ Sigrun said.

‘Maybe he _was_ a drunk,’ Bard replied.

‘No,’ Sigrun added, ‘I don’t think so. Not if he was like you.’

Bard swallowed, and felt himself blushing. He fixed his face into an immediate frown, and tried to look as stern and grave as possible.

Sigrun, meanwhile, snuggled hastily backwards into her armchair so that her face and chest were in shadow; her expression as unknowable as her smile.


	2. Chapter 2

After the Rain: Part One

In which Bard and Sigrun are twelve.

Sigrun dreamed often about the day the dragon took her mother. Others had been taken since then, of course – always once a year; always in a mist after the rain – but the faces of the others taken by Smaug were invisible and their absence brought no pain. She wanted to be ashamed of it, but she couldn’t be. Her ma had been everything, and without her, everything had gone wrong.

Tonight, Sigrun tossed in her sleep. In her dream, the skies were grey; grey like the mist that wreathed ma’s figure like a death shroud. Ma ran to the end of the wharf, laughing as Sigrun, laughing also, chased after her. They’d been playing catch that day and ma had won each time, but at the edge of the wharf, Sigrun would catch her, and ma would give her a sweet.

Suddenly everything changed. Ma’s footsteps as she ran became slow, thunderous, pondering, like the roaring of a great bellows, and as she paused at the end of the wharf, the shadow shot past her – across the wharf and across the surface of the lake. And the water erupted in flames that roared up to the sky in the path of the golden form of the dragon; red and black and brilliant against the grey sky; his eyes burning gold, his mouth spitting yellow flames as Sigrun’s spat crimson screams; as the beast turned at the far end of the lake and swooped back towards them; the bells of Laketown ringing out, but the world as empty as though Sigrun and her ma were the only people in it.

Ma moved very slowly, the twist of her body sending a wall of silence across the lake. Smaug sped across that silence and destroyed it as Ma turned and looked at Sigrun; smiling; like she knew what was coming. Except this time the dream was different; except this time she was changing; except this time she had Bard’s face, and he smiled at her; as tall as she was, as small as she was; smiling sadly, like he knew what was coming.

‘Look at me, Sig,’ he said softly; his eyes bright but sad but fearless as he heard the dragon swoop closer; as his spine straightened; as her fear made him forget his own; ‘you look at me.’

The dragon’s mouth opened; the world turned to fire and pain; and Bard’s eyes were closing slowly as the great claws opened, and snatched –

‘BARD!!!’ Sigrun screamed; jolting up and hitting her head on the cold stone wall.

Her breath consumed her. She couldn’t see. And for a moment she knew not where she was, except that it was cold, dark and damp. Then she heard the sound of her da snoring on the other side of the door, and her heart seemed to melt and drip downwards from her throat to its proper place in her chest; the memory of Bard’s face still filling her vision; the memory of his blood as she slipped fully dressed out of bed and groped about in the dark for the door handle.

Sigrun opened the door of the tiny closet where she slept. She was hungry. She gulped down the reality of that hunger, letting it fill her up and banish the night from her as threaded her way through the small labyrinth of buckets that dotted the floor, catching the leak from last night’s rain.

She opened the door despite the cold; the door being their only source of natural light. It was very early, and a foul mist blanketed everything.

 _Mist after the rain_ , Sigrun thought, _dragon might come._

Unlikely He would come today, though. When He had come last year, it had also been winter, and if there was one thing that everyone here grew up knowing, it was that He never came at intervals they could predict. Smaug would never grant them that mercy.

Sigrun’s da was asleep in his chair in the darkest corner of the room, snoring lightly. Sigrun gave him a gentle dig with her foot.

‘Morning, Da!’ she announced.

He roused himself briefly; looked at her blankly, then settled back down to sleep as though nothing had happened. Sigrun sighed. She had been so sure that today might be the day.

When Da had disappeared after losing their house. Sigrun had been sure that her stepma had put him up to it (else why would he leave her behind?), and she had been to everyone from the bailiff to the Master to see if anyone could help her track them down. She had been told at every turn – kindly, and often unkindly – that her da had obviously abandoned her; that he would very likely refuse to come back even if he could be found; that she would be ‘taken care of’ and ‘treated gently’ and that she should do her best to forget him.

‘But I don’t _want_ to forget my da!’ she had stormed as the Master’s deputy had shown her firmly to the door while the Master’s idiot son watched her from atop the staircase, ‘why does everybody want to forget him?’

Bard’s ma invited her to stay with them; pretending it was an extended visit, even though no one but richer folk did such things – there wasn’t room, or time. Weeks passed. And eventually Sigrun began to think that everyone was right. Her da wasn’t coming back. She was an orphan like Bard was; clinging to a mother who was two parents at once; trying to forget a living father who was nothing of the sort.

But Da did return to Laketown. He was alone, and broken down. He was barely speaking; barely able to walk. He had come back a shell, but he had come back, and Sigrun knew, when he looked at her, that he knew who she was, and that she was the reason he had returned.

Sigrun was the only one to feel the remotest bit of joy.

‘I feel so sorry for the poor little one,’ Sigrun heard some women saying at market, ‘it might have been better for her had he died. And him not being able to walk, or work: there’ll be nought but misery left for her until he _does_ die, and who knows when that will be?’

But Sigrun had never been the kind of child to indulge in misery, and before three days had passed she had succeeded in almost drowning herself while attempting to take da’s boat out on the open water; thinking that if she could learn to fish, she might be able to make enough to keep both herself _and_ her da, and that one day, he might be well again.

A great fuss was made when she was pulled out of the water, and for a while the townsfolk rallied together to prevent her from doing so again: when Sigrun refused to have her da staying at Bard’s ma’s as well as herself, a house was secured for them and the rent paid from the Master’s pocket.

‘Only for a while, mind,’ the Master had said; imperiously tossing a bag of coins at Sigrun when he came to call and tell her of his decision to be charitable; ‘your father must pull his weight like everyone else.’

 _How can he pull his weight when he can barely stand?_ Sigrun might have screamed in better days.

But she was a mouse now, and she could not afford pride. She could not afford to try to return the (anonymous) gifts of bread and fish left constantly outside the door, even though they made her cry with gratitude and shame. And all the while nobody seemed to see what she saw: that she and her da needed something to live on, and it could not be charity.

Some suggested that she take employment as a scullery maid in one of the great houses; still others thought that she could get work in a draper’s shop or at market.

‘And Da?’ she asked each person with a suggestion to make, ‘is he to remain on his own all day?’

Most of the replies were to the effect that a man who spent most of his days staring into space would be unlikely to remark her absence in any case, and that the risk of his falling over and breaking his own neck while trying to reach the toilet was an acceptable one.

The only person who didn’t seem to have an opinion on the subject was Bard. She was thankful for his silence, but curious – it wasn’t like him to refrain from telling her whatever happened to be going on in his head, no matter how stupid or infuriating it might be – but when he did eventually speak, he did so in a way that was utterly typical, both of him and of her.

He came to her one morning looking both characteristically earnest and uncharacteristically shy, and after much shuffling of feet and staring at his boots, asked if she wanted to learn how to fish.

‘Me and my da are going out today,’ Bard said; pushing a flagrant strand of hair behind his ear that immediately bounced free again; ‘when he falls asleep we can even try sail to shore; meet some elves.’  

Sigrun had stared in amazement at how well he knew her; to know that she would only accept help when it was disguised as something else. The thought of it frightened her slightly; as did the deliberately-detached expression in his grey eyes that clearly announced that he knew what she was thinking and was prepared to keep up the charade if it meant doing her some good.

‘Coming?’ Bard said.

Sigrun nodded, and rose to her feet.

They didn’t meet any elves that day. Bard showed her how to tell one end of the boat from the other; how to cast off; how to use the tiller; how to put the nets over the side without losing them; how to get the fish out of the nets without using a knife; how to gut them and clean them for market, or for a meal.

‘How do you actually cook them once you’ve _got_ them for a meal?’ Sigrun asked; a cook being one of the many things she had grown up with without da being able to afford it.

Bard shrugged.

‘You give them to ma and hope there’s firewood,’ Bard replied; nothing in his expression suggesting he was joking.

‘Lazy bones,’ Sigrun said, ‘I’ll bet you anything you’ve never tried cooking in your life.’

‘I have. On a fire.’

‘And on a stove?’

‘Not since I made Ma’s hair catch fire.’

She knew him too well to imagine he was joking.

Sigrun learned quickly. She took her da’s boat out. She sold her catch on the wharves to those who would sell it at market (some wouldn’t). She sold her catch to her neighbours. She paid the rent. She bought bread. She grew tired. She fell sick. Once, the cold on the open water gave her such a fever that she couldn’t get out of bed for three weeks. Her fingers bled and blistered from handling the nets, and she soon had arms like a boy from the effort of pulling them in. When her nets came up empty, she would go hungry. She slept in her boots, and quite often in her coat and gloves as well. Their house was damp, mildewed, without windows and in a much poorer part of town than where they had lived before da had lost his money. And yet, she was happy. There was no golden veil, no lie, no non-existent hoard of gold spilling from a cupboard each time it was opened. There were only people; and people were her gold now.

‘Good morning, Sigrun.’

The voice roused her from her reverie, and she was surprised to see that she had been emptying one of the water buckets into the kettle without noticing. Dreaming wasn’t like her. She didn’t usually have time for it.

Sigrun turned towards the door and squinted into the morning light. It was ma’am Gerda, Bard’s ma. She had a parcel under her arm.

‘Morning, ma’am Gerda,’ Sigrun said; depositing the empty bucket on the floor, ‘come in.’

The older woman entered, and Sigrun politely studied her as she struck hard at a tinder box to try and get a fire going. Gerda looked both pale and sickly this morning; the ice from outside seeming to cling to her clothing and imprison her in its cold. She had Bard’s look – the same dark hair, the same blazing eyes, and the same inability to make polite small talk.

‘I was feeling a little ill this morning,’ Gerda announced, ‘Bard was nowhere to be found; so I sent my idiot of a husband to market in my place and he came back with twice the usual amount of bread. Would you care to take it off our hands?’

Sigrun applied the match to the waiting piece of firewood, threw it into the stove and slammed the stove door shut; hoping the darkness would conceal her blush and the sound the rumble of her stomach.

‘Don’t you want to save it for tomorrow, ma’am?’ Sigrun asked as she stood; knowing full well that no loaf of bread lasted more than a day in such a place as Laketown.

Ma’am Gerda was clearly thinking the same thing.

‘I don’t fancy eating mouldy bread,’ she observed, in a tone that would brook no argument, ‘do you?’

Sigrun bowed her head and slowly accepted the parcel.

‘Thank you, ma’am.’

‘Nothing at all, my dear. Is your da in?’

Sigrun cocked her head in the direction of her father, who was still sound asleep in his armchair. Gerda squinted into the darkness.

‘I can only see his legs, so I’ll take your word for it. Why don’t you light some candles?’

‘Can’t afford them this week, ma’am.’

‘Yes. The fish do seemed to be deserting the Lake at present. Has he been asleep for long?’

‘Since midday yesterday.’

Gerda sighed.

‘Sigrun. Come to breakfast. Leave the bread.’

‘Ma’am Gerda, the boat –’

‘You can help me cook, and together we will try to forget that taking the boat out an hour later this morning will have little effect on the quantity of fish anyone brings home this afternoon.’

* * *

 

Sigrun pulled the door closed and followed Gerda across the way to her house. Below them, men were at work clearing the ice clogging up the canal; shouting insults at the occupants of a long queue of fishing boats trying to get out onto the Lake; who in turn were shouting insults at the men clearing up the ice; ‘we’re losing the best catch of the day, thanks to you!’ Sigrun followed ma’am Gerda into the house, and thought about what she had said. Good or bad, the fish were not biting this week, and that would mean hunger in more homes than her own.

A delicious smell of cooking porridge hit Sigrun full in the face as she hung up her coat and felt her empty stomach turn itself inside-out. Bard was at the table in his shirtsleeves, gravely attempting to make tea from a scoop of leaves that looked like it already been turned twenty times. His da was nowhere to be seen.

‘Morning, Sig,’ Bard said; not looking up from his task.

‘Where have you been?’ Gerda testily demanded; not enquiring after her husband.

‘I went to check the lines!’ Bard replied; his tone indignant as Gerda stripped off her own coat on her way to the stove.

‘You’ll get no fish putting your nets at the end of the dock,’ she said.

‘I told him, ma’am Gerda,’ Sigrun agreed.

‘Don’t you start!’ Bard retorted; glaring at her as though she were the worst of traitors.

Sigrun folded her arms.

‘Were there any fish?’ she asked.

Bard scowled.

‘No.’

‘Told you.’

‘Jump in the lake, Sig!’

‘Already done it once, genius. _You_ jump in the lake!’

‘Sigrun!’ Gerda called pointedly over her shoulder, ‘come and watch this porridge so it doesn’t burn.’

Sigrun carefully stirred the porridge as ma’am Gerda put the bread out onto the table. The mixture was thick and appetising, and though Sigrun knew that Bard’s family was marginally richer than she was (but then everyone in Laketown was richer than she was), she was far from being so sheltered as to think that this was the kind of breakfast they ate every day.

They could barely afford to share with her, but they shared with her anyway.

Her twin scourges of gratitude and shame consumed her as she helped ma’am Gerda spoon the porridge into bowls, and when they sat down to breakfast, she found herself wolfing down her food like a starving man, though it burned her tongue, scorched her throat and stuck a needle in her pride. She felt ashamed to be hungry; ashamed to be taking someone else’s food. Ma’am Gerda and Bard, meanwhile, politely pretended not to notice; twin sets of matching grey eyes meeting and averting from each other across the table.

‘Are you taking your da’s boat out today?’ Bard asked; surreptitiously slipping more bread onto her plate.

‘Maybe,’ Sigrun replied; pointedly ignoring it; ‘Hamar keeps chasing after me; telling me women aren’t allowed to keep boats.’

‘As if he’d know the difference between a woman and a boat,’ Bard snorted.

‘Not surprising when his own da the Master can’t even tell the difference between less and more;’ Sigrun added, ‘if he could, he might put the price of bread down instead of up.’

‘Poor Hamar,’ Bard theatrically sighed, ‘he fancies you so; he’ll do anything to get your attention.’

‘He does not!’ Sigrun exclaimed.

Bard pursed his lips and proceeded to make loud kissing noises as the anger that was always boiling in Sigrun’s heart begin to burst free.

‘Bard, _please_ ,’ Gerda said; giving her son a withered look.

‘No, please, ma’am Gerda,’ Sigrun replied in a sweetly obliging voice, ‘he’s just practicing for the day he manages to ask Lena Whitehands for her hand.’

Bard blushed to the roots of his hair and fixed his eyes on his porridge.

‘I am _not_ ,’ he mumbled.

“I wonder if _Lena_ is coming to the assembly this week,” Sigrun imitated; knowing she was being cruel, but unable to stop herself, “I wonder where _Lena_ is right now; I wonder if _Lena_ will wear white today – ”

‘I wonder how absurd you’ll look with your hair covered in one of those stupid doilies that married women wear on their heads!’ Bard retaliated; grinning as he clapped his hand to his forehead in mock revelation; ‘no, wait! You’ll need several of those as protection so that one of you and Hamar’s seventeen children doesn’t pull your hair out –’

‘ _Seventeen_?’ Sigrun shrieked; dimly conscious of ma’am Gerda burying her face in her hands.

‘Seventeen pitter-patters of seventeen pairs of little feet as seventeen little Hamars run screaming around the place while you _embroider cushions_ and wear _petticoats_ –’

‘Seventeen little Lenas turning up their seventeen little noses when you walk into the parlour smelling of fish –’

‘What’s wrong with smelling of fish?’

‘– and allowing you to walk them home occasionally –’

‘– and what’s a _parlour_?’

‘– but only when they need help carrying their groceries!’

‘ _What_ did you say???’

‘YOU TWO!’ ma’am Gerda roared.

The noise died at once. Sigrun could feel her cheeks burning, both with anger and embarrassment. On the other side of the table, she could discern the small, unmistakeable traces of hurt on Bard’s face, along with the same anger and embarrassment that she was feeling; and the sight smothered both of them at once, replacing them with a plodding, miserable guilt that made her feel sick to her stomach.

Sigrun cursed herself. She shouldn’t have mentioned the stupid walking home.

True, she fought with Bard a lot; and got, and expected, the same in return: enjoyed it, even, or she wouldn’t do it so often. One thing she didn’t do often, however, was hurt him. That, she didn’t enjoy.

‘I’m sorry, Bard,’ Sigrun said.

Bard took a moment to reply.

‘Does she _really_ only let me walk her home because she can’t carry her own groceries?’

‘No. I just made it up to be nasty.’

‘Bard, where’s your father?’ ma’am Gerda interjected; clearly eager to change the subject.

‘He said he was going to Golden Dragon,’ Bard replied; clearly still crestfallen.

Sigrun stared at him in despair.

‘I maintain that that place should be renamed,’ Gerda was remarking, ‘it’s not decent.’

‘I might take the boat out today after all,’ Sigrun declared.

Her declaration had the desired effect as both ma’am Gerda and Bard forgot about the present conversation and looked at her with a combination of worry and exasperation.

‘After a rain, when there’s mist?’ Gerda asked her; clearly unaware that she worked in such conditions for half the year; ‘is that wise?’

‘The dragon won’t come today,’ Sigrun confidently stated, ‘touchwood.’

‘Touchwood,’ Bard and Greda echoed; each slamming one hand onto the table.

‘I still don’t think you should go,’ Gerda continued; ‘best not to tempt fate.’

‘If Smaug takes me like he took my ma, it doesn’t say much for his sense of variety,’ Sigrun retorted, ‘or his intelligence.’

‘The only intelligence that beast knows about is the taste of blood,’ Gerda replied, unimpressed by Sigrun’s show of bravado; ‘I’d tell you to take my husband with you, but he seems to have gone drinking even earlier than usual today.’

‘I could go with her, ma,’ Bard suggested.

‘I don’t think you’ll be much use against a dragon, Bard.’

‘And you think da _will_?’

Sigrun, suddenly furious, interrupted.

‘Stop talking like I’m not here!’ she cried.

There was an instant silence. Sigrun got rapidly to her feet; wincing as her chair scraped noisily against the floorboards.

‘The boat needs taking out; I will take it out;’ she firmly declared; trying not to shout; ‘ _and_ I’ll do it alone.’

‘ _Alone_?’ Bard repeated in amazement, ‘what do you expect _me_ to do all day?’

‘Use your imagination,’ Sigrun testily suggested.

She bowed her head; suddenly embarrassed.

‘Thank you for breakfast; excuse me,’ she mumbled, and raced for the door; pausing only to rip her coat off the hook and to ignore both of them as they called after her.

Outside, the air was freezing. Sigrun, suddenly feeling exhausted, paused, and breathed it in; letting it extinguish whatever it was that had made her so angry for so little reason; sighing as fatigue took over, and made her dream of sleep. There were candles in windows and fires burning in the houses around her; and below her, the men responsible for clearing the ice lounged next to the canal eating soup; waiting for it to freeze again. The town was waking up. And all she wanted was to go back to bed.

She walked down to the wharf instead with iron in her heart _no catch, no food_ , and she had only just hopped onto da’s boat and brushed the snow off the tiller when a familiar pompous voice rang out from somewhere above her.

‘And just what do you think you’re doing?’ it questioned.

Sigrun rolled her eyes, spun around and threw a look of utmost ridicule at where Hamar was standing on the causeway above her; a tall and thickset boy of seventeen dressed in a preposterous set of furs that made him seem five times his actual size.

‘ _This_ ,’ Sigrun declaimed,‘is called a _boat_. I take it you don’t see many of them up at the Master’s house.’

‘Are you going somewhere?’ Hamar imperiously demanded.

Sigrun shrugged.

‘I’m going to catch some fish.’

‘Women aren’t allowed to catch fish or keep barges,’ Hamar stammered; his words falling over each other in his eagerness to get them out; ‘I checked it. In the law books.’

‘Are women allowed to starve?’ Sigrun coolly enquired, ‘is _that_ in the law books?’

Hamar couldn’t have looked more scandalised had she pinched his nose. Clearly other people were more tolerant of the fact that nothing he said ever made any sense.

‘No need to take that line with me, Sigrun,’ he said; his tone gaining in severity; ‘it was you who refused our hospitality, not we who refused to give it.’

Sigrun laughed bitterly.

‘I’ve tasted your charity once before; I was not eager to repeat the experience.’

‘Food is food,’ Hamar persisted in remarking, ‘and it was _hospitality_ , not charity.’

‘You’re half-right,’ Sigrun testily acquiesced, ‘taking your da’s coin and being expected to kiss his arse for it: _that_ would be charity. Accepting coin from the only man in town who can afford to buy bread– the decent kind, anyway – that would just be demeaning. I’d sooner catch my own fish.’

She cast off; hoping that would shut him up.

It didn’t.

‘Your attitude’s been noticed,’ Hamar absurdly declared; proudly puffing his chest out; ‘oh yes, it’s been noticed!’

‘Does your da spend a lot of time noticing twelve-year-old girls?’ Sigrun asked; letting the current take the boat out into the canal.

Hamar remained where he was; still looking haughty and disapproving. Sigrun clapped one hand over her mouth and pointed with mock hysteria at a point directly above his shoulder.

‘Dragon!’

Hamar let out an undignified shriek, jumped a good three feet in the air and spun his considerable girth around with a speed that would have made a wood elf proud; only to lose his balance and fall hard on his rump into the snow.

Sigrun laughed all the way down the canal; suddenly in a much better, if oddly-reflective mood as she steered the boat out onto the Lake. The events of the morning, up to and including her inauspicious meeting with the Master’s son, had convinced her that a part of her, at least, took pleasure in humiliating people; and that in future, this vice should only be indulged when dealing with stupid people.

Out on the lake still shrouded in mist, her laughter disappeared. She had spent the entire night in the mist – even if it was only inside her own head – but even were it not the case, she would still have winced at every sound; would still have cast her nets as quietly as she could. The mist had an uncanny ability to silence people; to make sound seem less: distant, far away.

Today was different. Today was not the natural creation of silence. The night had been too long; her dreams too much like memory. She closed her eyes, and her mother was in front of her again; smiling at her as she watched the dragon come; her features intermingled with Bard’s; her wakingness making them two people, when in the dream they had been one.

Sigrun shuddered; suddenly not wanting to be here.

_You have to be here. Grow up._

She steered the boat deeper into the mist. The air became so thick with it that she could hardly see the end of the boat. Moisture that she knew was not dew began to bead on her brow, and her heart began to pound so loudly that she could hear nothing else above the sound of her fear.

‘Sig? Is that you?’

Sigrun’s mind recognised the voice at the same time that her heart leapt into her throat at its alarming proximity. She flung her full weight against the tiller and pulled with all her might; dodging the other, slightly larger vessel that appeared out of nowhere and missed her hull by inches as it came alongside.

‘Have you lost your mind?’ Sigrun shouted; ‘what if you’d hit me?’

‘I came to apologise for this morning,’ Bard replied; ignoring her as he pulled his hood off; ‘you apologised to me, but I never got round to apologising to you.’

‘Can you try and avoid killing me next time?’

‘Don’t be so ridiculous, Sig; you know I wouldn’t have hit you.’

‘That’s the worst apology I’ve ever heard.’

Bard bit his lip, tried to say something, swallowed it, and stuck his hands in his pockets.

‘Sorry I said you’d have seventeen children. And wear doilies and things, and petticoats on your head.’

Sigrun felt herself blushing.

‘Sorry I said you smelt of fish.’

Bard smiled.

‘It’s only half an insult, Sig. You smell of fish too.’

A beat sounded from beneath the water. Soft at first, then louder, and harder; as though a drum were being pounded upon within its depths. Sigrun lunged frantically for the side of the boat as it began to rock suddenly and violently upon the Lake; as it might in the most dreadful of storms: to rock, and then to crash. In the boat opposite, Bard’s feet were slipping on the wet surface of the deck as he too seized hold of the side; and the wind was beginning to howl and scream as the waves grew higher and higher; as though a hurricane had come down from the Mountain to call up walls of water on the Lake and create a new city of drowned people and smashed wreckage. There was a force in the air and a force in the water; a kind of terrible harmony between them: a groaning of a bellows in a place above their heads, and a tempest that answered it; rhythmically, in time.

Bard and Sigrun looked at each other as they held on; their knuckles white, their stomachs roiling with nausea; their gaze tearing as a thunderous, inhuman roar rent the sky above their heads; turning their eyes upwards to the shadow, and the mist.


	3. Chapter 3

After The Rain: Part Two

 

The tempest threw Sigrun’s scream back at her, and sent her flying off her feet; as though the wind were flinging her, chained, against the mast for sport.

She crumpled like a rag doll, and Bard couldn’t see her anymore.

‘Sig!’ he shouted over the racket of the waves and the sick nausea of his own heartbeat, ‘SIG!!!’

She did not reappear, and the waves wrenched her boat further and further away: the waves from the storm from the dragon’s wings; and the sound of her crying would have been better, because at least he would have known she was alive.

_Oh, no._

No.

No.

‘SIG!’ Bard roared across the water; his boyish voice breaking, ‘SIGRUN! YOU ANSWER ME RIGHT THIS MOMENT!’

It struck him how much he sounded like his ma as Sigrun’s silence, continuing, left him nothing but fear: not of the storm, or of the dragon, but of what might have become of her, and the fingers of his right hand were numbing, suddenly, as though he had frostbite; though he didn’t. He took a frantic step forward as Sigrun’s boat continued to slice through the waves, up, down, up, down, further away, further towards where he wouldn’t be able to reach her; he still couldn’t see her; he had to help her; _where was she_???; and with the storm-sounds still deafening him he took hold of the ropes that held his nets in place and scrambled quickly over the side of the boat; hoping to reach her by crossing the ice: the broad sheets of it dotting the Lake that Sigrun called water lilies, on account of the small caps they broke up into when the weather was warmer.

Adults were always telling the Lake children that if you played on the ice, you’d either get frostbite, or slip right through it and drown. You’d pound and scream beneath the ice until your air ran out, and nobody would find you until the thaw.

‘It’s winter,’ Bard growled; his voice inaudible over the screaming of the wind; ‘I won’t fall through.’

His feet touched the ice: touched, slipped, held, slipped again as the sheet swayed madly in the storm. Great walls of water thundered upwards on either side of the boat; roaring skywards to crash back down again, and the rope was torn from Bard’s hand and the weight from his body as the wind seized hold of him and flung him hard onto the ice; onto his back; as though he weighed nothing.

He hit his head so hard that for a moment he saw nothing but stars. He felt his mouth open to cry out in pain, and his airless lungs prevent it, and then, suddenly, the feeling of something hot and sticky leaking from the back of his head and mingling with the ice that slowly soaked his clothes and skin. The force of the water made the ice rock back and forth beneath him like a toy horse, and when he tried to sit up, he was flung immediately down again, by the wind and by his own spinning head.

Then a rush of sound, like a wind rising and falling, flashed suddenly through the world like an earthquake; and the storm ended as quickly as it had begun; the rain disappearing; the wind waning, and a burst of light in the dark sky that made Bard turn his head slowly towards Laketown as a tempest of fire, not water, erupted in the distance.

His mouth screamed out for his ma, his da; his muscles screamed in pain as he tried to sit up, and move, and run, run all the way back and find them; and a warm darkness slammed suddenly into him as the world turned upside down.

He jolted awake. He must have passed out. He was lying sprawled on the ice like a drunkard; his head turned towards Laketown; and the whole western part of the town was burning, burning and turning red. The fire was rising higher. Maybe someone had been taken. Or maybe He wouldn’t take anyone this time. Maybe He’d just burn something, and be gone; like He did when He was really angry, though no one ever knew what He was angry about. He just came, and took.

Bard screwed his eyes up against the thought of his parents burning; of Ma trying to save Da; of Da who probably wouldn’t wake up for long enough to be saved, and again, he wanted to go to them; to run and keep running. But in his line of sight, he saw his right arm flung out beside him: the numbness had spread from his fingers to his entire arm, making it as useless as it would be had it been chopped off; and deep inside himself, within a part of him that was not his eyes, he saw Sigrun fall and crack; more broken-up than she was already; her yellow hair flying behind her, turned silver by the colour of the mist; her small bones splintering audibly as she struck the mast and fell; and he knew that if he left her here; that numbness would be with him until the day he died.

Gritting away a whimper of pain, Bard forced himself to sit up, and stand up. The world reeled, and reeled again as he stood on the swaying ice; stumbling, and falling, and standing again. He stepped once, then again, then again, and began to move carefully across the Lake, to where he could see Sigrun’s da’s boat, adrift and aimless; the opposite of everything that Sig was.

To think that they’d been arguing that very morning. About nonsense. About Hamar Idiot Master’s son, and Lena Whitehands, with her pretty round face and silken dresses.

They’d been arguing on the morning Sigrun’s da lost all his money. And he had not been kind to her.

 _When people hear you talking about it, they laugh at you, because they know you’re lying!_ he had said, _Where is this gold? Where is it? It only exists in you and your da’s head; that’s where it is!_

 _When I find her, I’ll apologise_ , Bard thought firmly.

His firmness soon turned to sheepishness as he realised that he spent a good half of his life apologising to the wicked slip of a girl for comments that _she_ had driven him to.

 _There’s not much point in having a best friend who doesn’t insult you every day,_ Bard thought.

And after that, his mind filled up with silence, so it wouldn’t have to fill up with the opposite.

By the time he reached the boat, his hands were shaking so badly that he could hardly take hold of the ropes. He growled at himself and gripped them with fingers that he couldn’t feel; his clothes soaked; his boots soaked as he managed to haul himself up, and over the side; his head pounding so hard that he could barely see. He turned slowly towards the mast where he had seen her fall, all of him like ice; but when he finally saw her, he felt his blood come back, and choke him.

She lay on her back. Her eyes were closed. Blood was leaking from a cut on her forehead and covering half her face in blood. It was dripping down her nose and onto her lips. She was white like a corpse, so white she was almost translucent, and he stared hard, desperately, at her chest, to see if she breathed.

He couldn’t see.

Bard shuffled closer to her. He knelt beside her and poked her shoulder, hard. She was cold as ice.

_She must be playing some kind of game._

Bard poked her shoulder again, harder.

‘Sig, come on,’ he said.

He waited; staring intently; his heart in his throat; the hope hurting worse than that one time Da had knocked two of two teeth out. And she just… _lay_ there, doing… _nothing_ , not listening to him at all – not that there was anything unusual about that.

‘Sigrun, STOP it now!’ he shouted; shaking her shoulder furiously with his left hand, for his right still hung useless and frozen at his side.

And her body remained limp and cold, and her eyes wouldn’t open, and when he finally put his hand on her chest, he couldn’t feel anything.

That was when he started to cry. He didn’t care who heard him. He didn’t even care if _she_ heard him. The sobs raked at his throat, and the tears on his skin were boiling, and his hands, both of them, were moving suddenly from Sigrun’s shoulders to her face, trying to wipe all the blood away: it wasn’t right, all that blood on her; years ago he had promised he would help her, even if she didn’t know that; and if he had helped her properly, she wouldn’t be – she wouldn’t –

The blood smeared from her face to his hands. They were red. So was she. He couldn’t get the blood away from her: she was so cold even though there was so much of it, and he remembered what she had looked like, when together they had realised that the storm was not a storm, but a hurricane whipped up by a dragon’s wings: the fear, the horror on her face, her nightmares made real; _she must have been so scared._

She was freezing _WHY IS SHE SO COLD_ , and he couldn’t admit why she was so cold, though he knew already, and he was pulling her against his chest so he could keep her warm, _you’re suffocating me, idiot_ , she would have said if she was awake, and even her head, beneath his chin, felt cold; her hair dark and limp and gold from the ice, from the glow of the fire in the distance.

She was cold. She was dead.

Bard choked down his tears as though they were an injury. She couldn’t be dead. She’d only hit her head.

And yet he couldn’t feel her breath. And yet she was so cold.

‘I’m sorry I said all those things about your da being a liar and about you being a liar for talking about all his gold,’ Bard half-whispered, half-sobbed; ‘and for telling you to jump in the Lake all the time. I don’t really want you to jump in the Lake – unless you want to take a swim, in which case feel free. Though please don’t drown anyone – you’re always threatening to, and actually doing it might get you in trouble. Sig, can you hear me?’

He looked down at her face – flushed, feverish and sleeping – and he knew that she couldn’t.

‘Sig, will you _please_ …’

He stopped talking; his sobs taking away everything that made sense. He could hear nothing but the sound of water, and the sound of flames. The sky was turning orange from the heat of fire burning away the mist; in his arms Sigrun grew colder; and he felt himself drowning even though he could breathe.

He looked at her again. She was wearing a boy’s coat that was several sizes too big for her. It was Bard’s own. He had given it to her. His ma had been furious and had shouted at him for days, because it was lined with fur, and had cost a lot. Bard had shouted right back at her that he had preferred to give it to someone who really needed it; a decent coat being an indescribable luxury when you couldn’t even afford to buy tea.

‘Compassion, is it?’ Ma had stormed, ‘compassion doesn’t put food on the table!’

Bard didn’t know anyone in Laketown who made that statement less true than his ma, and said so. She had answered him by throwing her hands up and storming out of the house so abruptly that she had knocked Storr the butcher’s apprentice into the canal.

But she hadn’t asked Sigrun to give the coat back, and today in the mist, it looked black against his friend’s midnight-white skin as she slept, un-living and cold, like the inside of him.

‘Sig, please wake up,’ Bard whispered; staring into her face, willing her eyes to open, ‘please wake up. _Please_.’

Only the dragon’s roar answered him.

Bard’s head jerked rapidly away from Sigrun towards the sound that seemed to tear the sky in two and leave a raw, red wound from Laketown to the Mountain. In the distance, the beast came dancing out of the flames with a terrible, infernal grace: a dark shape that took up all the sky; its eyes glowing brightly; promising fire and death, and Bard felt the fear freeze him up inside as Smaug swooped back towards them; bringing with him a second storm: a dragon above and a tempest below: the waves called up by His wings; the rain; the wind.

Then the dragon turned; His wings bearing Him towards the other side of the Lake; and He plunged suddenly up into the mist and disappeared; as though He had never existed.

Turning away from the burning sky, Bard bent over Sigrun’s body and held her tighter, and the silence, when it came, brought no relief. In all his short life, he had never felt so empty; so incapable of describing what that emptiness was. It was like grief, and betrayal, and fear, and numbness all at once; only it wasn’t. It was like…guilt.

‘Bard?’

He shouted out in fright and almost let her fall; his heart pounding so fast, so suddenly, that he could hear nothing else.

But he looked down at her, and her eyes were wide, and open; her eyelids opening and closing, her eyelashes like little drops of breath; her lips parting; her mouth breathing; and a small, exhausted frown creasing her forehead.

Her face.

Her.

‘Why are you crying?’ Sigrun whispered; reaching out and touching his cheek; feeling the moisture on her fingertips.

And he wanted to say so many things to her. He wanted to break down and tell her it was because she was alive. It was because her eyes were open; because her eyes were blue. It was because she had left the world for a while, and the world she had left behind had been darkness.

He stayed silent instead; catching her when she fainted again; answering her questions when they came; helping her sit up; helping her turn and look back to where they’d come from. Laketown burned. The mist lifted. And Bard felt her hand slip slowly into his.


	4. Chapter 4

Steel

In which Bard and Sigrun are fourteen.

‘Poor Bard,’ Ingaborg giggled; her anxiety masquerading as mirth as she playfully nudged Sigrun, ‘he’ll never learn. What was it that he offered to carry today? Her hat? Or was it her handkerchief?’

‘Now you’re just being cruel,’ Sigrun laughed.

‘I’m not being cruel; I’m being _observant_ ,’ Ingaborg insisted; ‘why else would he always offer to carry her things for her if he wasn’t – ’

‘Because he’s _Bard_ ,’ Sigrun drawled, ‘he’s _always_ offering to carry _everyone’s_ things for them.’

‘I’m not convinced.’

‘It’s just the sort of person he is.’

‘You’d know better than me. He never offers to carry _my_ groceries for me.’

‘Have you ever asked him?

‘ **NO TALKING**!!!’ the gaoler’s son roared; kicking noisily at the door of their cell as his pale and rat-like face appeared disapprovingly at the bars.

Ingaborg and Sigrun snorted simultaneously.

‘Come on, Alfrid, we’ve been sitting here for _hours_!’ Ingaborg complained; shooting him a testy glance, though her face was whiter than snow.

‘She’s right, you know,’ Sigrun sensibly pointed out, ‘Inga’s family rarely has money, and I _never_ have money; so odds are the King of Carven Stone will return before someone arrives to bail us out.’

Alfrid sniffed disdainfully.

‘All the other dangerous criminal elements involved in today’s ruckus found some way to pay up,’ he drawled, ‘what makes you two so special?’

‘ _Dangerous criminal elements_?’ Sigrun exclaimed; not believing the injustice of it.

‘Yes!’ Alfrid shouted, ‘dangerous criminal elements who don’t know the difference between –’

‘They were just hungry people; hungry people asking for bread!’

‘Throwing stones is a rare way of asking, Sigrun Sigrysdotter.’

‘Mixing sawdust into bread is a rare way of _baking_ , Alfrid Lickspittle.’

Alfrid’s face turned red.

‘Don’t call me that!’

‘Why not? I know what I’ve been tasting for the past few days, and it isn’t flour and yeast!’

‘Save your talk of revolution for someone who _cares_ , Sigrun!’

‘And as for all the trouble that goes into getting _lembas_ bread,’ Sigrun mocked, ‘what’s the point? Only one in ten of the richer folk can afford to buy it, and they don’t even need it! Why doesn’t the Master just cancel whatever contract he has with King Thranduil and use the money –’  

Ingaborg aimed an impatient kick at the inside of the door and glared at both of them.

‘Yes, yes, this is all very interesting; can you just let us out, please?’ she snapped, ‘we’re sleepy.’

‘And we’re very, very bored,’ Sigrun added.

Alfrid snorted.

‘You’re _unrepentant_ ; that’s what you are.’

‘We’re hungry; _that’s_ what we are,’ Sigrun corrected.

Alfrid, clearly unused to his da’s prisoners being quite so sharp, quite so articulate, or indeed quite so female, cast about for something suitably intimidating to say. He settled on a second shout of ‘No talking!’, and as the sounds of him shuffling away across the dirty straw to regain his place at the guards’ table grew fainter and fainter, the light in Ingaborg’s eyes waned in a similar fashion.

Sigrun cast about for something comforting to say.

‘I think he really _is_ going to keep us in here all night,’ she ended up remarking, ‘by this time _tomorrow_ , however, odds are we’ll have driven him sufficiently crazy that he’ll be _begging_ his da to let us out.’

Ingaborg’s spirits did not appear to be much affected by Sigrun’s efforts at light-heartedness, though her desperation for distraction continued unabated.

‘Why not send to ma’am Gerda?’ Inga suggested, ‘can’t she bail you out?’

‘And leave you here alone?’ Sigrun exclaimed, ‘never!’

‘You’re too ashamed to ask her,’ Inga concluded.

Sigrun shrugged.

‘I don’t like to ask her for things. She gives too many things already.’

‘Shall we continue our previous conversation?’

In truth, Sigrun wasn’t remotely interested in discussing whose groceries Bard liked to carry, but if it kept that small light of hysteria in Ingaborg’s eyes from glowing any brighter –

‘Doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere,’ Sigrun shrugged; trying to sound enthusiastic.

Ingaborg smiled, and scooted closer to her.

‘Let’s say Bard and Lena do eventually marry like everyone says –’

‘ _Marry_?’ Sigrun exclaimed.

‘Her parents will disown her, so they’ll be poor as dirt,’ Ingaborg surmised, ‘but at least we can be sure that their children will be adorable – ’

‘Stop stop STOP!’ Sigrun shouted; starting to feel nauseous.

‘Why?’ Ingaborg asked in surprise.

Sigrun took a deep breath to prevent herself from exploding and took a sip from the tankard of water that had been left for them earlier.

_Why did other girls always assume she wanted to discuss this sort of thing? She had fish to catch!_

‘Don’t you think them a bit _young_ to be thinking about marrying?’ Sigrun said eventually, in a composed tone that she was rather proud of.

‘What’s age got to do with it?’ Ingaborg dismissed the idea with a flourish, ‘ _my_ ma got married when she was _thirteen_.’

‘ _Yes_ ,’ Sigrun acknowledged, ‘but rich little princesses don’t marry poor fishermen’s sons. I used to be one, so I should know.’

‘Well how utterly unromantic you are,’ Inga accused; pouting.

Sigrun cocked an eyebrow.

‘Inga, who’s to say she’d even _accept_ him?’ she asked.

‘She’d accept him like a shot; there’s lots of girls after him,’ Ingaborg replied.

Sigrun snorted, and ended up choking on both water and laughter.

‘ _You’re not serious_?’ she rasped; coughing violently as Inga continued.

‘Why are you so surprised?’ Ingaborg said, ‘he’s a handsome boy.’

‘Are we talking about the same Bard?’ Sigrun asked.

‘Come on,’ Ingaborg replied; narrowing her eyes; ‘you can’t say you haven’t thought about it.’

‘I haven’t,’ Sigrun said, ‘he’s my friend.’

Ingaborg smiled in a knowing way that made Sigrun want to strangle her.

‘You mean he’s your friend with a capital F?’ Inga suggested.

‘A capital F for _friend_ ,’ Sigrun replied; fingering the hem of her coat.

* * *

 

Earlier that day, Sigrun had been sitting with Ingaborg on a rooftop overlooking the market pool; basking in the sun and sharing a bottle of (stolen) cider. The famous (in Ingaborg’s mind) incident in which Bard had offered to carry Lena’s hat for her had occurred; and the two of them had taken a turn about the market before disappearing in the direction of the former’s house in the nearby usurer’s district; Lena in royal blue silk; Bard in threadbare rough spun wool.

It was then that it had happened.

Old Gus the baker, who talked constantly of handing the business over to his sons but never seemed to get round to it, had been suddenly afflicted with a bad case of clumsiness brought on by old age and had lost his grip on the loaf of bread he had been handling.

The loaf had tumbled into the dirt; sending up clouds of dust not unlike the sawdust that the poor of Laketown had been tasting and ignoring in their bread for the past week. And life on the Lake had seemed suddenly to warp and scream into sharp relief: the brightly-coloured silks and velvets of the rich, the brown and grey work clothes of the poor that clung to them like a filthy mist; the bones of the children that were visible through their clothes; the lack of food, the lack of work; no fish in the Lake; no money; and the Master’s house rising above it all, being repaired and extended (again) by taxes taxes taxes that fuelled greed, not goodness.

Everyone stared at the loaf in the dirt. Several people rushed forward, snatched what bread they could and ran. And then, like some terrible, malicious omen, the Master’s carriage came rumbling over the bridge.

A terrible cry went up, like the sound of a storm gathering, only worse, because the sound was human, and high, and had children’s voices in it too. The Master stuck his head out of the carriage window and demanded to know what was happening. Somebody threw a stone in response. And as Sigrun felt her fingers close around a loose tile of the roof she was sitting on, she saw that beneath her, and around her, everyone else was clutching a stone too and glaring at the Master as though he were a tyrant.

Things escalated rapidly from there. People swarmed over the market like starving bees over a honey comb; the buzzing entered Sigrun’s ears like a sweet song she had never heard before, and suddenly she no longer saw the Master, or the baker, or the market before her, but _hunger_ : she saw mothers and their children sitting hopelessly in doorways, their faces gaunt and silent with hunger; she saw her da silent and unresponsive in his armchair, with only his eyes betraying how hungry he was; she heard ma’am Gerda’s constant coughing across the way; saw her wide, forced smile as she insisted that the choice between a doctor or food was no choice at all, and that she didn’t really feel that poorly at all. She saw herself each time she fished, feeling so weak she could hardly see; she saw herself each time she saw her reflection in the water and gasped – too thin, always too thin – and she saw Bard at those times when he was too starved to speak; feeding himself on silence and retreating deeper into himself; his burning spirit choking on its own embers no matter how hard she tried to make him speak. And she was raising the stone above her head and screaming with the rest, and destroying destroying destroying; not caring; not thinking about anything except her anger; her anger that fuelled everyone else’s, everyone else’s that fuelled hers.

The rest of the Master’s guard soon arrived, and the town archers, and the police; order had been restored with brutal efficiency; and she had ended up in the cells with Ingaborg and a good half of the town; the numbers depleting as the day did; as people found the money to pay; as people found things to sell to get the money to pay, and by nightfall, it was just her and Inga left: the ones with so little to sell that the idea of having money to spend on bail was a joke; and a very poor one at that.

* * *

 

Sigrun had somehow managed to both fall asleep and stay asleep when she felt Alfrid Lickspittle’s boot kick her in the ribs.

‘Sigrun!’ he exclaimed as she groaned in pain, ‘Oi!’

Sigrun stared up at the little man in annoyance.

‘ _What?_ ’ she snapped.

‘Your bail’s been posted,’ Alfrid said.

Sigrun glanced at Ingaborg’s sleeping form next to her.

‘I won’t leave without my friend,’ she told him.

‘Never mind your friend, just _leave_ ,’ Alfrid growled, and he bent over, seized her collar and yanked her upright; ignoring her yelp of protest as he dragged her out into the corridor with one hand and slammed the cell door shut with the other.

It occurred to Sigrun that she should be upset by such treatment, but she found it difficult to be anything but amused as she forced herself off her bottom and onto her feet; temporarily alarming the apparently-furious Alfrid, who jumped a foot in the air in surprise before compensating for this temporary weakness by continuing to drag her along in a thoroughly-threatening fashion once he had assured himself that she didn’t intend to knee him in the balls.

‘Please don’t tear my coat, Alfrid, I _am_ still growing into it,’ Sigrun pleasantly remarked.

He responded by yanking her collar even harder as he dragged her towards the prison antechamber.

‘If this is the level of trouble I can cause simply by being a prisoner, then perhaps I should get arrested more often,’ Sigrun coolly observed.

‘And you think that’s something to be proud of, do you?’ a familiar voice rang out from the antechamber, and Alfrid, as he hauled her inside, smiled condescendingly at Bard; blissfully ignorant of the fact that the latter’s face was rapidly metamorphosing from cool disapproval to blind rage at the sight of Sigrun being dragged along like a side of beef.

When Sigrun’s eyes met Bard’s, she saw something in them that frightened even her.

‘Quite right, Bard,’ Alfrid was declaring; oblivious; ‘there aren’t enough sensible young people in this town.’

‘You take your hands off her,’ Bard snarled; sending Alfrid a glare that could have melted steel as he seized hold of Sigrun’s elbow and promptly marched her out of the gaol house himself.

Once outside, Bard dropped her arm immediately and stormed off into the night; entirely ignoring Sigrun’s struggle to keep up with him as he began to make his way through the maze of houses and waterways that led home.

Sigrun didn’t see what he had to be angry about.

‘What’s the matter with _you_?’ she called after him.

He kept walking and did not reply; stomping ahead of her in a furious temper that made the boards groan beneath his feet.

‘Bard?’ Sigrun exclaimed; confused and a little hurt as she closed the space between them and caught his sleeve, ‘ _Bard_?’

He turned around with murder in his eyes.

‘You… _fool_ ,’ Bard seethed, ‘what did you think you were doing?’

She stared at him; too confused to reply.

That only seemed to make him angrier.

‘Attacking the Master?’ Bard demanded, ‘attacking the _baker_? _Throwing stones_? What is wrong with you?’

‘I –’

‘You think anything will change because of it? You think ending up in _gaol_ is something to make light of; as though you’ve _accomplished_ something?’

‘I’m glad it happened,’ Sigrun stubbornly declared.

‘Then you’re an idiot,’ Bard snapped.

‘What did you say?’ Sigrun demanded.

‘I said you’re an _idiot_ ,’ Bard repeated in fury, clearly annunciating each syllable so that there could be no mistaking what he had said; and she fell silent for a moment beneath the weight of that fury; fearing she would be crushed by it.

She had never in her life seen him this angry. His solemn grey eyes had become a veritable inferno; his entire body sharp and seething and brutal with rage; as though he had become an arrow made from flesh that hurt more, not less, than steel.

He made her want to scream. Instead, she put her hands on her hips, and spoke calmly.

‘You’ve seen what life in this town has become. You’ve seen it first-hand.’

‘Don’t you _dare_ –’

‘You know about the pamphlets that have been written. You know about the _letters_ that have been written. The pleas. The petitions. You’ve signed most of them. Have they changed anything?’

Bard’s lips had parted slightly, as though he were baring his teeth and stopping himself from doing so; and he stalked promptly away from her without replying.

Sigrun threw up her hands.

‘Why are you so angry with me?’ she shouted after him.

‘Why don’t you go away?!’ he shouted back; not turning around as Sigrun began to stomp after him.

‘I live opposite you, idiot!’ she declared as she reached him, ‘where else do you expect me to go?’

Bard turned to face her so rapidly that she jumped.

‘Why didn’t you send to us the moment you were arrested?’ he snapped.

‘What?’ Sigrun asked; the rapid change in subject making her head spin.

‘Why did I have to hear, from _Hamar_ , of all people, that you’ve been sitting in gaol for hours because there’s nobody to pay your bail?’ Bard demanded.

‘I’ll pay you back!’ Sigrun growled.

She realised, too late, that it was the wrong thing to say.

Bard shot her a look of profound disgust, his bottom lip curling in disdain, his eyes sharp like ice, and she could tell that she had grievously insulted him.

‘Bard –’

‘Damn your pride, Sig,’ he spat, and he walked away again with the obvious intention of putting as much space between him and her as possible.

Sigrun felt regret and self-loathing burn her so painfully that she could have cried from it.

 _Oh, you idiot; you stupid_ stupid fool –

‘Bard!’

And she sprinted after him again; intent on proving that pride meant nothing to her.

‘Bard!’

When he didn’t stop walking, she ran faster than she ever had in her life; the dark seeming to mask everything but herself, and him…and the ice on the wharf that made short work of her old boots as she slipped and skidded right onto it like an ungainly ice-fisherman; the entire world reeling around her like a child’s spinning wheel before a pair of hands seized hold of both her elbows, swung her around and timeously stopped her from taking an unseasonal bath in the canal. 

‘You –’ Bard spluttered, so angry he could hardly speak as he gripped her elbows, ‘ _you – drive – me –_ mad – ’

Sigrun’s hands were still clutching tightly at his wrists, and he wrenched himself from her grip quite deliberately; turning away, not walking away, and Sigrun tried hard not to think about the fact that this might only be because he was too weak to do any more running.

Standing behind him, Sigrun tentatively reached out and touched his arm with her hand.

‘Bard…’

He did not reply, or turn around; his physical form seeming to burn the air with the anger that coursed through him like molten gold.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sigrun said softly; with a sincerity that would have made her die of embarrassment under other circumstances; ‘it was a stupid thing to say. I’m sorry.’

He didn’t move, or speak. The leather of his jerkin felt soft beneath her fingers. She could feel her right hand tensing and laying itself on his shoulder, turning him slowly until he faced her; his eyes ablaze with numb defiance.

Her heart hammering, in shame, she told herself, she tried to explain.

‘I didn’t send to you because I’m not your responsibility,’ Sigrun murmured; her spirits not rising one jot as Bard’s brow wrinkled in confusion, ‘I won’t be a child forever. Someday I’ll grow up. Someday it’ll just be me. And when that happens, you will have to let me make my own way. You won’t be able to take care of me forever. You’ll have other people to take care of.’

Bard stared at her.

‘What do you mean?’

Sigrun stared back at him; rather disbelieving that he could be so naïve.

‘Don’t you know what people are saying?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Bard answered; his brow wrinkled; ‘what are people saying?’

Sigrun sighed; not wanting to talk about this for the third time in one night. If his eyes were closed, let him open them himself.

‘I’m going to see about getting Inga out,’ Sigrun said, ‘she’s almost as poor as me; it shouldn’t cost much. Apologies, again, for being so rude.’

‘Sig –’

But she was walking away already; to see what Inga’s folk had managed to raise so far.

She felt Bard’s gaze follow her until she turned the corner.


	5. Chapter 5

The Desert of the Lost: Part One

In which Bard and Sigrun are fifteen

 

Sigrun had sat with Ma’am Gerda that morning so that Bard could take the boat out. And the older woman had looked like a shrivelled-up, dying little doll in a bed that was already too small for her; her hair bone-dry and greying, her body so thin that it might have belonged to a corpse, with only her eyes looking alive as they avoided the handkerchief clutched in her hand, spotted with drops of blood that she had tried for so long to hide.

Sigrun had already told her that she should avoid speaking in order to avoid coughing. Ma’am Gerda had kept on talking, and had kept on coughing; as though she already knew that her time was –

Sigrun squeezed her eyes shut to stop tears from forming in them. There would be plenty of time for crying later. She’d lost one ma, and survived. She was sure that she could do it again.

‘Handing those little scraps of paper out to people is dangerous, Sigrun,’ Ma’am Gerda rasped.

‘It is necessary,’ Sigrun firmly declared.

‘Not if they get you killed.’

‘And if the whole town rises up, what will the Master do? Kill all of us? He –’

‘Hold your tongue, Sigrun, I need to talk to you before Bard gets back,’ Ma’am Gerda interrupted; her voice rising slightly above a whisper, and becoming a conflagration of coughing and weakness and blood as she spluttered miserably into her handkerchief.

Sigrun got her a glass of water and gently tilted her head forwards so that she could drink.

When she replaced the glass of water, the rim was streaked with blood.

Sigrun wiped it down; her stomach roiling as her eyes began to sting again. She blinked – once, twice – then allowed herself to look at Ma’am Gerda again; even though it still hurt, even though it still made her sting.

Ma’am Gerda was looking at her sadly, but determinedly, as though she had guessed her thoughts. She took Sigrun’s hand. Sigrun covered it in both of her own.

‘I’m very ill, Sig,’ Ma’am Gerda murmured, iron at the centre of her quietness; ‘I will not permit Bard to spend extra money just to add a few days to my life, so I doubt I’ll last the week out –’

‘Ma’am Gerda –’ Sigrun choked.

‘Don’t interrupt,’ Ma’am Gerda said firmly; ‘you know it’s true.’

Sigrun bowed her head; unable to stop the tears from coming this time. She choked on them, swallowed them; felt them burn her throat and stop up her breath. But she needed to stop them; to show that she was strong; to show Ma’am Gerda that she could be depended on.

‘My son Bard…’ Ma’am Gerda whispered; her other hand moving to Sigrun’s cheek to wipe away her tears; ‘I want you to look after him.’

‘Look after him?’ Sigrun spluttered; surprised, in spite of her misery. If there was any looking-after going on, it was generally Bard who was looking after her. He was the dependable one.

‘I want you to look after him, because he needs looking after,’ Ma’am Gerda said, ‘he’s like me. All heart, no head.’

‘I’ve always considered him to be the more sensible of us two,’ Sigrun choked.

Ma’am Gerda smiled.

‘Aye. He may be sensible, but he is also impassioned. Everything comes from here,’ she laid her hand on her own heart, ‘if he’s left to his own devices it will destroy him one day; like it did me. If somebody had only stopped me…though in many ways I’m glad I didn’t listen. Every moment of rejoicing I have had since then has been thanks to my son…and to you. If I hadn’t married, I would have known none of that. Even if everything else in my life has more closely resembled an aged pile of horse manure.’

Gerda’s hand left her chest and took hold of Sigrun’s hand; squeezing it so hard that it hurt. Her tears were flowing freely now, and grew steadily worse as Ma’am Gerda began to speak more desperately than Sigrun had ever heard her speak.

‘His father will not take care of him. His father doesn’t even know I’m ill – probably off in Golden Dragon drowning the sorrows that he imagines himself to have known. I know that the people of this town are fine family when a person has no one left…you know that, even though your da is still with us…but Bard will need the help of someone who will still be there when his mourning is over, and I know you will be that.  He respects you – he’ll listen to you.’

‘Bard never listens to me,’ Sigrun sniffled.

Ma’am Gerda smiled again.

‘Of course he listens to you. Sometimes I laugh so hard at him: ‘Sig says this; Sig says the other; you’ll never guess what Sig told me today.’ Give him good counsel, and it will make him think twice about doing anything stupid. I’ll leave it to you to decide what’s stupid and what isn’t. No, don’t swear to it,’ Ma’am Gerda said as Sigrun began to raise her right hand, ‘I know that you will do it. You’re a good girl.’

Sigrun sniffled, and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

So much for appearing strong.                                                            

‘And Sigrun,’ Ma’am Gerda added, ‘please make sure that you two don’t name your first child after me. Gerda is an awful name. It makes one sound like a washerwoman.’

Sigrun had felt the tears evaporate, and had been about to protest when Bard had arrived, with fish. And Sigrun had put on the big borrowed cloak that was too large for her, and had gone off into the center of town to hand out the little scraps of paper that Ma’am Gerda considered so dangerous.

‘Insurrection is the only thing they can’t take from us!’ Sigrun shouted; the cloak concealing most of her face and body as she moved through the crowd shoving pieces of scrap paper, parchment and material into the hands of anyone who would take them; ‘Down with the Master and the price of bread! Insurrection is the only thing we have, and they _cannot_ take it from us!’

The crowd swarmed around her as the sun began to set: mothers holding their children’s hands on the way back from market, fathers and sons hurrying home from Golden Dragon before their wives suspected anything; ‘Give me some of those, friend,’ a voice said, and Sigrun passed a bunch of papers to another unidentifiable, hooded person – Skael, by the smell of things – who walked off in the other direction and began to shout as well:

‘Insurrection is the only thing they cannot take from us!’

And it was.

A decent loaf of bread cost a silver now – more than most families made in a week – and meat of any kind was more expensive than gold. People no longer went daily onto the Lake, and many stopped altogether, because the hope was worse than the hunger. Shops and market stalls closed down. No others opened. The only places doing any kind of good business were Golden Dragon and the pawnbroker’s – Sigrun had left her ma’s wedding ring there six months ago after nine days without food, and still had nightmares about being unable to reclaim it – and protests and small riots had become the order of the day. The Master’s son Hamar had even organised some of them, though there was often a distinct whiff of self-preservation about those particular demonstrations; as though Hamar were trying to show people that he was not like his father; that he knew that the people knew where public money was going; and that _unlike_ his father, he knew what happened when desperation and hunger came together.

The butcher had been torn to pieces by an angry mob two weeks previously, and the baker spent most of his profit engaging guards to stop people from doing the same to him. And all the while, people who couldn’t afford decent food got sick and died; or else lingered between the two like Ma’am Gerda, who had made the transition, months ago, from coughing up spit to coughing up blood.

‘Insurrection is the only thing they cannot take from us!’ Sigrun shouted, ‘down with the Master and the price of –’

‘YOU THERE!’ a voice shouted.

Sigrun sprinted for the cart drawn up to the side of a nearby house; not even bothering to turn around and look as noises of a discontented crowd being forced to part filled her ears.

Police? Town archers?

‘Stop in the name of the Master!’

Town archers.

Sigrun leapt onto the cart and seized hold of the gutter; pulling herself up and onto the roof.

‘No, no, not the roof, DON’T LET HIM GET ONTO THE ROOF!!!’ a commanding voice roared in aggravation, but she was away already; sprinting across the rooftops and leaping from one to the next as the archers gave chase below.

At least she was gangly enough to have made them think she was a boy. Apparently starvation did have its advantages.

Sigrun knew, as she ran, that all she needed to do was get back to her own quarter: they wouldn’t risk the anger of the people by following her there without police. The tiles were slippery from the previous evening’s rain, so she kept her tread light, not pausing from one step to the next as she ran towards the Mountain; past chimneys belching smoke and past many more than belched no smoke at all; she could hear sounds coming out of them as she ran, sounds of people who were not like her: a child screaming because his da would not buy him some stupid toy or other; a woman pleading with her husband not to throw the plans of economy she had drawn up into the fire; a woman weeping as a man shouted about another man; a man weeping, softly and uncontrollably, alone.

Rich people problems.

Sigrun leapt from one building to the next; stumbling and almost falling as her left boot went through a gaping hole in a roof. An arrow missed her hand by half an inch as shouts of ‘stop in the name of the Master!’ and ‘get down!’ rang out from the street, and Sigrun yelled suddenly in surprise at the feeling of a hand closing around the boot that was stuck in the roof; not pulling it in, but pushing it upwards again, helping her; ‘thank you!’ she exclaimed, and shot off again towards where the roofs had more holes, and then more, and then small, pitiful fires in the chimneys, and then no fires in the chimneys at all. She didn’t hear children screaming here: they cried, or else snivelled because they were too hungry to do anything else. Here, she could hear wives screaming at husbands for spending all their money on drink; or wives and husbands sitting together trying to find ways to make any bit of money last, or children stumbling in with firewood that they couldn’t possibly have bought at market, and that parents were too desperate to send back in the name of pride. The clattering of archer’s boots had died down in the streets below – they hadn’t followed her, just as she had thought – but even so, so she kept the cloak wrapped tight about her and the hood up as she hopped agilely off the roof a few houses away from her own, into an alleyway just behind the row.

Sigrun stripped the cloak off, stuffed it beneath her coat, shook out the long, tangled yellow hair that would leave nobody in doubt that she was a girl, and headed off to Bard’s to see how Ma’am Gerda was doing.

Beneath the little bridge that joined their houses, two men were sitting fishing in a boat. Sigrun groaned internally, and banged the tops of their rods together; winning herself not one but two glares of annoyance as she crossed.

‘You can tell the Master I’m done for the day,’ she said, before striding jauntily to Bard’s front door, and knocking, and entering.

The bed was empty, and made up.                            

Bard sat beside it, with his palms pressed to the coverlet; as though clinging to the ghost of human warmth that had been there minutes, or hours ago.

‘Where is Ma’am Gerda?’ Sigrun asked stupidly.

Bard looked up at her; his face streaked with tears and his eyes black with grief.

‘The Angel of Death has come for her already,’ Bard replied; the ceremonial words seeming to burn his tongue, ‘tomorrow; she will help me send her away.’

‘It is the way,’ Sigrun finished; a terrible, searing heat in her chest seeming to blur up his face as she remembered her own visit to that same old woman nine years ago.

_‘Must we still send her away, even if the dragon took her?’ she had asked._

_‘Something of her must be sent away,’ the Angel of Death had replied, ‘or she will return to take others with her.’_

At the time, Sigrun hadn’t understood what was so bad about that, because she had rather wanted her ma to return and take her away. Bard had been the one to explain it to her.

‘She’ll come back as a spirit, but she won’t be her anymore,’ he had said, ‘she’ll have forgotten who you are, and who we are, and she’ll bring nothing, in coming back, but more death.’

At least Bard had a body to send away. All Sigrun had had was an empty boat with Ma’s things packed onto it: everything left of her mother going up in flames and disappearing forever. The only thing she had been allowed to keep had been that infernal wedding ring, which was now sitting in a pawnshop near the market pool; waiting for some rich merchant’s brat to take a fancy to it, then throw it in the Lake when the girl he wanted told him she didn’t care one bit for his garish wardrobe or his ugly face.

Sigrun stood on the opposite side of the room from Bard, frozen, not knowing what to do. When her own ma had died, she had been mad; not wanting to be spoken to, or touched. Bard’s eyes were like night as they met hers; light seeming to flee from them completely. But then he bowed his head; just as she had done earlier that day so that Ma’am Gerda wouldn’t see her crying, and in a flash, she was across the room and where he was; her arms winding around his shoulders as the sobs began to rack his chest, and his heart to tear up against hers. She held him tightly and squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn’t cry: her friend, her best, best friend in the whole world –

‘I… _can’t,_ Sig,’ Bard sobbed, so softly that she could hardly hear him; ‘ _I can’t_ …’

His words disappeared into his sadness, and she shushed him softly as he cried; the skin on the back of his neck boiling as her hand rested there, and he growled against her in a way that should have made her jump; but that didn’t; because she knew it was the sound of him trying not to let himself out; because the sorrow inside that freedom was terrible, and frightening, and too much to feel and be; too much –

She could feel the emptiness in that tiny, miserable excuse for a bed beside them where hours ago Ma’am Gerda had been living, and breathing, and suffering, and she could feel it inside herself and inside him; a desert of the lost wrapping them both up and filling them up with that emptiness that hurt, and hurt, and never went away, not really; not completely; not ever.

She couldn’t tell him that now. He’d have to realise it for himself.

‘Sig, I can’t,’ Bard said again; his fingers digging into her waist as his head rested on her shoulder, ‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t –’

‘Yes, yes you can,’ Sigrun whispered fiercely into his hair, ‘you will.’

His breath was hot on her neck. She breathed deeply.

‘You must,’ she whispered.

Bard raised his head to look at her; his face tear-stained and lined with hurt; his eyes so bright that they hurt her: hurt her with memory and hurt her with now. She put her hand up and touched him, and beneath the tears his skin was burning.

‘Sig, you won’t ever leave, will you?’

Sigrun smiled sadly through her tears.

‘No, Bard; I won’t ever leave.’

His eyes locked with hers as his hand covered her hand that was touching his cheek. And in response, she felt her blood blaze so rapidly through her veins that she almost yelled out in shock. It was as though all of her soul had been struck by lightning, and when she looked up into Bard’s eyes again, it happened again; reducing her breath to nothing and her heart to cinders. And they were standing far too close together; far closer than what was proper between boys and girls their age; but she wanted to step closer, and she wanted to run; and she could tell from the unabashed blush on Bard’s face that the same thing was happening to him; that his chest was rising and falling faster; that his face was only inches from hers, and that his lips, as he looked at her, were parting as though to match hers.

‘Do you want tea?’ Sigrun blurted.

‘Yes, let’s make tea,’ Bard blurted back; and they turned their backs on each other with relief as one scurried away to find tea leaves and the other to find the kettle.


	6. Chapter 6

The Desert of the Lost: Part Two

Bard dug into the contents of the chest with one hand; his other holding the candle upright as he searched for a threadbare lace scarf from Ma’s childhood that he thought she might like to have with her when she reached the halls of her fathers. Above him, in the house, he could hear the sound of his Da pacing rhythmically across the floor, pretending to be devastated, and unable to forgive himself that he had been too busy drinking to know that she was ill.

Bard, frustrated, and trying not to think any more on how much he hated his father, growled in annoyance at the infernal scarf’s persistent refusal to show itself, stuck his hand deeper into the chest, and promptly dropped the candle in surprise as something long and sharp sliced so deeply through his finger that he almost cried out in pain.

Bard snatched his hand out of the chest to find blood streaming down his hand, and as he cursed and wiped his hand on his clothes, he drew out with his other hand the cause of his injury.

It was long, thin and black.

Anger stirred in the pit of his stomach as he realised what it was, and what it meant. The memory of Sigrun’s face on the day her mother had died filled his vision – her eyes wide with tears, her pale face a nightmare against her black little-rich-girl velvet coat – and by the time he had slammed the chest shut and stomped up to his father, his hand bleeding all over his clothes, he was furious.

‘What’s this?’ Bard demanded; slamming the object down onto the table.

Da looked indifferently up at him from the moth-eaten non-comfort of his usual armchair, and said nothing. As though it were of no great consequence. As though it didn’t matter.

‘I found it in a chest,’ Bard prompted; hating himself for the hope within him that there was some logical explanation; some reason –

Da, still sitting, his eyes still glazed over with what Bard assumed was drink, once again made no reply.

‘Will you please explain to me,’ Bard seethed; gripping the object so hard it hurt; ‘what a black arrow is doing at the bottom of a _chest_ when that beast still comes once a year to _eat_ someone?’

‘And who is going to use it, young sir?’ Da snapped in reply; disdain awakening him and making him real; ‘ _You_?’

It took every ounce of strength Bard possessed not to attack him where he sat.

‘Are you telling me,’ he raged, ‘that you had this when old Delling was taken; when Holgeir and Holmfrid were snatched on the same day; _when Sigrun’s Ma_ –’

‘And what would happen if I _did_ use it? Hm?’ Da coolly enquired, as though they were discussing the weather, ‘explain it to me! Would I have a chance of killing Him, do you think?’

‘Give it to someone who DOES!!!’ Bard shouted at him; so angry he could hardly see; _you stupid, selfish, pitiful old –_

‘Custom dictates that a son of Girion must be the one to use it,’ Father was saying in a self-satisfied voice that only enraged Bard further:

‘Somebody dies every year, and you speak to me of CUSTOM?’ Bard stormed; flinging the black arrow onto the ground and staring at the walls and door expecting to see Ma walk through at any moment and stop this; talk to him, hug him, make everything better –

‘What happens if you miss?’ Da asked; a hint of impatience leaking from his voice as Bard looked at him; silent, and listening intently now; ‘what? No solutions, young sir? No chastisement? What happens if Smaug comes tonight, I go up to the windlance and I miss; the arrow lost while the dragon is eating me?’

‘I wish the dragon _would_ eat you,’ Bard mumbled.

‘We’d be doomed forever; that’s what,’ Da triumphantly answered; ‘no hope, no possibility, nothing.’

Bard stared at him; wanting to kill him for being sober tonight of all nights; so sure of himself; so able to explain, and talk, and argue; so ready to decide who died and who lived; as though any of it was his choice to make; as though he wasn’t a drunk, but a father. Bard needed him to be drunk tonight, not sober. It was the only way that he could be sure he was wrong.

Da was looking gravely at him with something like pity in his eyes.

‘We are of the blood of kings, Bard,’ he solemnly said.

‘You think I care a fig about the blood of kings?’ Bard snapped.

‘– and a good king knows when to use his weapons and when not,’ Da finished; speaking slowly, as though he wanted his words to be remembered, ‘you don’t use the last arrow you have to save one person. You use it when it can save the whole kingdom, and not before.’

‘Why didn’t you use it three years back, when the dragon burnt down half the town?’ Bard shot back, ‘because it was only _half the kingdom_?’

Da’s silence was all the answer he needed.

Bard stared in horror; horror at his father, and horror at himself for understanding his words. He hated the look on Da’s face, with its sadness of the wise, responsible adult talking to the stupid, sensitive, idealistic adolescent about life. And he hated the way that his anger was dying within him, then raging again: as though he were two people now, instead of just one.

‘Bard,’ Da said; his eyes still fixed on him; ‘you must understand –’

‘You make me sick,’ Bard spat, and stormed out of the house and into the night.

 

* * *

 

When Sigrun knocked on Bard’s door, the wood turning white in the light of the moon, it was Mister Alwis’ window that swung open; his old, wrinkled face appearing both shocked and displeased.

‘Who’s there?’ he wheezed, ‘who’s bothering the family at a time like – oh, it’s you, Sigrun.’

‘Hello, Mister Alwis,’ Sigrun answered; knocking again, and receiving no reply; ‘have you seen Bard at all?’

‘I saw him some time ago,’ Mister Alwis told her; ‘in a very jokey mood, he was. Grief affects us all in – ’

‘A _jokey_ mood?’ Sigrun repeated; staring at him in disbelief.

‘Well I _assume_ he was joking; him being a sensible lad;’ Mister Alwis said with approval, ‘he said he was going to Golden Dragon.’

Sigrun nearly fainted dead away.

‘He said he was going WHERE?’

 

* * *

 

After fifteen tankards of ale – one for every year of his life – Bard no longer understood why he so harshly condemned his da for drinking. He understood completely:  now. A few mugs of this stuff, and one’s troubles seemed utterly inconsequential, faded, reduced to a pleasant warmth in one’s heart that called for rejoicing, not sadness. What matter that his mother was dead? What matter that _Sigrun’s_ mother was dead, and didn’t have to be? It didn’t matter that half the town was starving; it didn’t matter that he was starving; it didn’t matter that Sigrun spent most of her free time handing out treasonous pamphlets or preaching the overthrow of the Master in places where anybody could catch her and put her in prison (again). None of that mattered, because he couldn’t feel it – not hunger, not sadness, not anger, not worry. Nothing.

‘Let’s have one of _these_!’ someone suggested; brandishing a horn of ale that was half as tall as he was.

He could not, in that moment, imagine a better idea. _Why was everybody here so clever_?

At the door of Golden Dragon, Sigrun pointedly ignored the sign spelling out ‘NO WOMEN’ and, as she walked into the tavern, tried hard not to throw up on the spot. The smell was ghastly enough to make her gag – _how can so many people spend their lives in this place?_ – and when her eyes had finished watering, she began to search; pushing her way through walls of drunken, stinking men and following the sound of cheering and shouting. There was so much of it going on that she was quite at a loss of where to go or where to look – her eyes scanned the crowd for Bard; and eventually the floor for Bard; before some unknown person whistled at her and rather deliberately groped her arse.

Sigrun turned around and kneed him in the balls; eliciting a shriek of pain and a cacophony of laughter as whomever it was slumped, senseless, to the floor, crying for his mother.

And then she saw him.

His face was shining with sweat, and ale was dribbling down his chin as he threw himself, heart and soul, into a game of some kind that involved two men drinking out of two gigantic drinking horns with the aim of seeing who could finish first.

Considering that Bard didn’t drink – ever – he seemed to be doing rather well, but the sight of him made her burn with anger: her friend; her good, decent friend, carrying on like the rest of typical, sordid, stupid mankind; poisoning himself in order to forget how difficult his life was.

A good-natured idiot called Torwald, whom she knew slightly from pamphleteering, elbowed her in the ribs and greeted her.

‘May I buy you a drink, Sigrun?’ he politely asked; seeming put out by her presence.

‘No, thank you,’ Sigrun declined with equal politeness; her eyes fixed on Bard, who was still hard at work making a fool of himself.

‘Good, isn’t he?’ Tor observed; following her gaze and gesturing in Bard’s direction; ‘I’ve never seen the like.’

‘And the winner of this stupid game gets what?’ Sigrun asked; giving him a look that could have frozen seas solid.

Tor looked at her as though she had suggested that the moon was made of green cheese; and she was about to give him a piece of mind when –

‘Siiiiiiiiiiiiig!’ Bard happily called out; raising his half-full horn of ale to shouts of triumph from his opponent.

He tottered over to where she stood, not seeming remotely concerned that he had lost, and Sigrun took a moment to fold her arms in disapproval and further appraise the state of him.

He looked drunk as a lord, and miserable; his solemn grey eyes a horror; _my friend,_ she thought _, my poor, poor friend –_

‘May I ask what you are doing?’ Sigrun coolly demanded; swallowing any thought of sympathy.

‘I’m getting _drunk_ , my dearest Sig,’ Bard slurred; bowing to her and almost losing his balance; ‘isn’t that what sons of Girion are meant to do?’

Sigrun’s hand lashed out quicker than a viper and landed such a monumental clout on his face that it knocked him over.

He had barely hit the ground before she had seized roughly hold of his lapels and had begun to drag him out of the place; anger seething in her stomach at how heavy he was and how light she was, and at the whistles of amusement and catcalls that were erupting everywhere.

‘Be good to him, Ma’am Sigrun!’

‘Be sure to give him his trousers back when you’re done!’

‘Someone’s in for a rough night!’

Sigrun felt her cheeks burn and ignored them all; dragging Bard onto the dock outside the inn, ignoring his spluttering protests and shoving him roughly forwards into the water trough.

She seized hold of his hair and held his head under the water as though she were trying to drown him; her efforts accompanied by a great deal of struggling and kicking of legs.

After a few seconds, she dug her hand deeper into his hair and pulled his head out.

‘Sober yet?’

‘Wha –’

She pushed his head back under the water, and held him down for longer; her fingers digging into his hair and his entire body thrashing as he attempted to escape.

It was a testament to how drunk he was that he never once came close to succeeding.

When she finally let him go, Bard spat out what looked like half a gallon of water before collapsing next to the water trough; dripping wet and coughing and wretched.

‘What is the matter with you, you fool?’ Sigrun shouted at him; her hands on her hips; ‘ _on this_ _of all days_?’

Bard shrugged mutinously; his lip curling in a way that was not at all like him.

‘It seemed as good a time as any,’ he declared; scratching at his sodden hair.

‘And do you feel any better?’ Sigrun inquired with mocking courtesy.

‘I might have,’ he growled; glaring at her; ‘if you’d only left me to my own devices!’

‘ _Left you to your own devices_?’ Sigrun shrilly repeated, ‘your ma’s body is not even cold and _already_ you’re acting like a fool? I thought you had more sense than that.’

Bard paused for a moment; his anger seeming to melt away as he looked up at her with enormous, confused, guileless eyes –

‘Don’t you give me your puppy dog face, Bard,’ Sigrun declared, ‘I’m immune.’

‘Go awaaaaaaaay, Sig,’ Bard said with affectionate insolence.

‘If I go away,’ she replied, ‘you’ll go right back in, and you’re not of good enough family to find the strength to come out again!’

‘Sig!’ Bard exclaimed.

‘You said it!’ she shrugged.

‘You’re cruel,’ Bard accused.

Sigrun snorted.

‘We’ve been friends all our lives, and you only notice this now?’

She bent over, seized his elbow and jerked him to his feet, eliciting much groaning and theatrical sighing that compelled her to ask, rolling her eyes all the while:

‘Can you walk by yourself?’

‘No,’ Bard sullenly replied, and stood still as Sigrun grudgingly took hold of his arm, slung it over her shoulder and began to half-lead, half-drag him away from the tavern, towards home.

The presence of other hopeless, friendless drunks along the wayside, either sound asleep or incapable of movement, was not as lost on him as it usually was (probably because he was one of them now), but he was struck, in that moment, by the fact that none of them had a good friend like her who would come and take them away. If they had, they wouldn’t be there.

He decided to tell her what a good friend she was, and looked down at her small, furious face that showed nothing but anger and disappointment.

‘You’re absolutely horrid; that’s what you are,’ Bard grumbled.

‘Once again, you only notice this now?’ Sigrun drawled; her pretty curly hair all twirled about his arm and hers like firelight as she kept on walking and didn’t look at him.

Why was she being so _nasty_?

‘I am… _bereaved_ ;’ Bard said; trying to sound sad, but only managing to sound melodramatic, ‘I am _sad_ and _alone_ and you won’t even permit me this _one_ alleviation of my sad-aloneness –’

‘Hopefully you’ve drunk enough to thank me when you wake up tomorrow morning,’ Sigrun sniffed; still not looking at him.

‘What happens tomorrow morning?’ Bard asked curiously; squinting at her.

She rolled her eyes.

‘Ask your da when you get home. I’m sure he can describe it better than me.’

He felt his entire body clench up, and he felt her feel it too; how she jumped slightly against him as his fingers tightened on her shoulder.

‘I don’t want to speak to my da,’ he said, ‘Ever.’

‘At least he is sometimes capable of coherent speech,’ Sigrun replied, ‘mine never is.’

Bard thought back to the black arrow and felt his anger burn through him all over again. He might as well tell her. She would find out anyway, so better let her shout about it now.

‘Guess what?’ Bard declaimed; making a swoop with his arm that might have been intended for a large audience he was addressing.

‘What?’ Sigrun sighed.

_She isn’t interested at all. She really can be horrid sometimes._

‘I found a black arrow hidden amongst ma’s old jerseys and tea cosy’s,’ he declared, ‘ _a black arrow_.’

Sigrun stopped dead, and turned to look at him. Her face was white like people said pearls were: not that he’d ever seen one; only rich people ever saw those, but still he knew what they looked like, and –

‘What did you say?’ Sigrun softly asked.

‘It was just… _sitting_ there, all waiting to chop my finger off!’ Bard exclaimed; indignant both at the memory and at her lack of sympathy; ‘Look!’

He shoved his finger into her face as proof, and she swatted it away and started to grow whiter and more and more pearly-looking, even though she was still pretty, so he decided to explain.

‘He’s been keeping it there all these years,’ Bard told her, ‘for _decoration_ , apparently – decoration that nobody can see – and all this time people are getting _eaten_ and he doesn’t care; he just _leaves_ it there because he says he can only use it to save _the whole town_ instead of _just one person_ ; as if he’s got the right to just – oh, Sig, I’m sorry, don’t cry please!’

Too late. His Sig was turning her face away from him and swallowing her own sobs and covering her mouth; and he realised all at once that he’d been a stupid arse; he’d made her cry instead of shout, and he couldn’t take it when she cried, especially when he was the one that made her cry; and as she tried to turn her entire body away from him, he seized her and hugged her as hard as he could to say that he was sorry; his arms all around her back like a cloak of himself.

‘ _No_ crying,’ Bard mumbled into her shoulder; rocking her slightly; ‘bad; not allowed.’

‘Bard, you’re killing me,’ Sigrun rasped.

‘You mean you don’t forgive me?’

‘I mean I can’t breathe.’

‘Sorry.’

He released Sig quickly so that she could breathe; and because her face was still very close to his, he tried to wipe the tears from her cheeks, because he couldn’t take it when she cried. All he succeeded in doing was swatting her nose in the process; making Sigrun scowl and touch it lightly with her fingers, as though she were trying to push it back into place.

The little beast then reached out and pulled _his_ nose in a way that was not altogether gentle, and he reached out in an attempt to do the same to her.

His fingers snapped around thin air as she sprinted, laughing, away from him, calling over her shoulder; tears still in her voice:

‘Maybe a good run will help you sober up, Bard the drunk!’

Bard, thinking that was rather unjust, sprinted after her as she dashed in the direction of home, and he watched her scurry in and out of the shadows like some small, long-limbed, half-wild yet unimaginably-fragile thing, with laughter like daylight and goodness.

He caught her elbow within seconds, then her arm, then her waist; her arms flailing and his arms locking around her from behind as she kicked like a child at the empty air; still laughing – though mostly at him.

‘Let me go!’ Sigrun squealed.

‘If I let you go, I’ll have to throw you into the canal!’ Bard warned.

That only made her laugh harder, and the sound of it in the night air and the feeling of it; of her head thrown back against his chest as she laughed and laughed –

 Then her laughter died down, and the sound of water and life rushed in again; the stink of death, the feeling of it, the shadow of it, the loss…

‘You stink of ale,’ Sigrun accused.

‘And you stink of fish,’ Bard sulked.

Sigrun shook her head.

‘Bard,’ she said, ‘I smell. _You_ stink. Now let me go.’

It was while he was refusing to let her go that he noticed her ribs.

He could feel them beneath the palms of his hands; standing prominent through her clothes like the meat he saw at market: thin, half-starved, as though nobody had bothered to fatten the animal up before killing it. He could run his fingers along those ribs, and it would seem as though there was no flesh there at all: just skin and bone. And suddenly, he felt the fumes in his mind begin to clear; the warmth in his stomach extinguishing; the world coming back; hurting, but like a good hurt. Sigrun had stopped struggling; sensing; knowing; and when he bent over and put his chin in the crook of her shoulder; he covered her hands with his, so that they became the flesh she didn’t have.

Her hands were cold as she locked her fingers with his.

‘One day I’ll kill it,’ Bard said softly.

‘What?’ Sigrun asked.

‘ _It._ ’

‘No, you can’t!’

She jerked out of his arms as he jumped in surprise; she spun around; she faced him; and her face as she looked into his was terrified; as though she had seen her own death.

‘You can’t,’ Sigrun repeated; her hands clutching his coat again, though for entirely different reasons, ‘you can’t ever. Promise me you won’t.’

That stung.

‘Why?’ Bard asked.

She looked at him like he was mad.

‘Because the dragon will _kill_ you, idiot!’ she exclaimed.

‘How do you know?’ Bard demanded.

Sigrun shrugged.

‘I’ve seen it sometimes when I dream.’

‘You _dream_ about me?’ Bard repeated; his jaw dropping as Sigrun turned pink.

‘I dream about you getting your head bitten off,’ she said severely; her face beautiful in its conflict its love its hurt that only he could see; ‘it’s not quite as inappropriate as the alternative.’

‘What is –’ Bard stuttered, stunned; almost choking on a curious ball of emotion that had appeared suddenly in his chest and now appeared to be attempting to stifle him; ‘what exactly is the alternative, Sig?’

‘You know very well,’ she snapped; blushing and trying to look angry, but her hand had found his, somehow, and she was holding it tightly; as though he were about to fall; like strength and vulnerability at the same time, like everything she was, and suddenly he didn’t want to let her go, ever – he would stand here forever if it meant he didn’t have to let her go, ever – _WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME???_

‘Sigrun –’ he began.

‘What?’ she said.

‘I think I’m in love with you. Will you marry me?’

She slapped him; the sound ringing out like a whiplash as she jerked her hand from his, slapped him a second time and stormed away; muttering to herself about drunks and lunatics.

Bard sat down on his haunches and stared at the ground beneath his feet; feeling stupid and stupefied both.

‘I’ll take that as a no, then,’ he grumbled.


	7. Chapter 7

The Desert of the Lost: A Very Short Part Three

 

People had brought what little firewood they had, so that Ma’s funeral barge became a tower of flame in the center of the Lake. Those same people were gone now, and had followed the custom by leaving as soon as Da had left; even though he had left far earlier than was decent.

Bard remained after they had all gone, staring straight ahead of him into the flame; his insides numb; his insides imaginary; his head a nauseous mix between up, down and doubting the difference between the two. The one constant left in his life – her – stood close beside him: close, but not touching.

Sigrun was looking towards the fire with beautiful blue eyes as red as his own were; her cheeks pink from cold, and her tangled hair dancing about her shoulders in the wind. He was sure that she could sense his gaze – he knew it – but still she looked away from him towards the funeral barge; pointedly avoiding his eyes. When the tips of Bard’s fingers touched hers, she said nothing; her hand slipping into his and holding it tightly as he looked once more at the tower of fire, and felt the numbness within him clench and roil.

 _You don’t use your last arrow to save one person_ , his da had told him, _you use it when it can save the whole kingdom, and not before_.

The words had haunted him since they had been spoken, and in his mind, Bard saw their truth; saw the wisdom in their cruelty. But if the last arrow ever happened to be in his hands, and the one person he wanted to save was Ma, or Sig –

_I would use it._

Sig was still holding his hand and still avoiding his eyes, and he coloured slightly as he considered that the reason might have nothing to do with grief and everything to do with the disjointed series of disturbing (and incomplete) memories that had been chasing themselves around his brain since waking up that morning with his head feeling like it had been nailed to his pillow during the night.

‘Did I propose to you last night?’ Bard softly asked; looking once more out onto the Lake.

There was a long silence before she replied.

‘Yes,’ Sigrun eventually said.

Bard swallowed.

‘Did you say no?’

Sigrun looked at him.

‘Yes.’

He didn’t particularly want to burst out laughing, but he did it anyway.

Something sombre and unidentifiable flashed across Sigrun’s face for the tiniest of seconds – a tiny darkness; a tiny hurt – before she was smiling, and laughing with him, and he forgot that he had seen it at all.

‘It _was_ a close one, Bard the drunk,’ she said; punching him in the shoulder.

‘It would’ve ruined everything, wouldn’t it?’ Bard surmised; punching hers.

‘ _Ruined_ is an understatement,’ Sigrun snorted, ‘just imagine. We’d have to see each other _all day_ –’

‘Every day.’

‘Rain or shine.’

‘Summer or snow.’

‘We’d kill each other.’

‘We’d both be dead before a month had passed.’

‘We’d have to…’

Sigrun’s words died on her tongue as her eyes flashed from Bard’s to a point just over his shoulder, and as he turned back towards the Lake, he heard her say:

‘Is that your da?’

He didn’t even need to squint to see that it was: his da, in a rowboat; streaming across the lake in an elegant ribbon of grey and gold, towards the funeral barge.

Bard began to entertain thoughts of murdering his father for the second time in twelve hours.

‘What is he doing?’ Sigrun muttered.

‘If he’s drunk,’ Bard seethed, ‘I swear I’ll –’

Sigrun shook her head.

‘He’s rowing too well for a drunk man.’

And he was. The rowboat on the Lake drew closer and closer to the pillar of flame; Bard’s da did not look left or right, but straight ahead, and Bard frowned, and muttered, almost to himself:

‘Then what is he doing?’

Sigrun did not reply. Her eyes fixed on Da’s figure grew less confused, and more afraid, and a dreadful suspicion stole over Bard’s entire being as Da brought the rowboat neatly alongside the burning barge and seized hold of the rigging with one hand; the oars still clutched in the other.

The rowboat came to a stop, and Da pulled himself to his feet.

It was only when he flung the oars into the Lake that Bard began to scream.

‘DA, NO!’ he bellowed; waving his arms above his head; as if that would help at all, ‘DON’T, NO!’

‘MISTER BAIN, DON’T!’ Sigrun yelled; terror making her voice crack; ‘DON’T!’

‘DA, NO! DON’T DO IT!’

‘MISTER BAIN, NO!’

‘DA! **DA**!!!’

He ignored them. He climbed the ropes and reached the fire. The fire was tearing up the deck. Bard’s da was a small, solitary figure against the inferno; looking up as though bewitched by it.

‘DA, DON’T!!!’ Bard shouted.

‘DON’T DO IT, MISTER BAIN, PLEASE DON’T!!!’ Sigrun screamed.

Da turned slowly to face them; the fire already licking at his clothes. And Bard could feel his eyes upon him; his eyes were searching and meeting Bard’s; his da could see him; he knew that he could see him –

‘ _Da, please don’t_ ,’ Bard sobbed; desperation choking up his voice as his heart turned the colour of coal; ‘ _please, please, don’t –_ ’

Da hesitated for one more moment – or perhaps he was simply waiting.

Then he fell onto his back into the flames and let them swallow him whole; and Bard turned and ran; sprinting for the barge with Sigrun, with the entire world screaming into him and onto him –

‘Get the mooring!’ he bellowed at her; leaping into the boat and preparing to cast off, and she unwound the rope in seconds; giving the boat a mighty shove away from the wharf and leaping onto it before she could be left behind; as good as any boy.

Then the flame on the Lake roared huge, high and lion-like to the sky, and reduced the funeral barge to cinders and ruin; the fire fed too quickly by too much new flesh. Bard felt himself filled up by horror; the flames burning as though they were licking at his own flesh. He could feel them burning through his skin, his muscle, his bones, but leaving him alive, leaving him here; not taking him with; leaving him. And where he was, he slumped to his knees and vomited what felt like his whole heart out of himself; collapsing into Sigrun’s arms through the sound of his own screams.


	8. Chapter 8

An Amputation: Part One

In which Bard and Sigrun are still fifteen.

Sigrun walked alone to Ric and Odell’s house; deliberately avoiding the route that would take her past Golden Dragon. She could not see that place again now. To see it would make her remember, and she could not endure that after yesterday.

She had been woken in the middle of the night – yesterday – by the son of Golden Dragon’s barkeep and politely asked to come and see to Bard; who’d been thrown out after refusing to pay for the four pints of ale he had just consumed and was now lying in the middle of the street paying no attention to the people who were trampling him on their way home.

Sigrun had found her friend alone, and lying in a pool of his own vomit. His hair had been sodden with sweat; his face had shone with it; and the smell, the _smell_ of ale and filth where before it had been better things: like wood, and oil and leather, like life.

She had lightly shaken his shoulder to wake him up, and he had looked up at her, sad as a child, and asked her who she was.

It had been one of the worst moments of her life.

She wanted to be angry with him, but she couldn’t be. She had promised Ma’am Gerda that she would take care of him, and if she had done what she had promised, he wouldn’t be like this. She wanted to help him; she wanted to bring him back…but he couldn’t come back, because he was still there; standing on the dock, watching the tower of fire as it lit up the sky and extinguished everything inside him. At night she could still see the madness in his eyes as the funeral barge went up in smoke; she could still feel him writhing in her arms as his mouth opened in a scream of desolation and despair, as though the fire were burning him too. And when he had had no voice left with which to scream; only a whisper, only a croak; it had been to ask her, yet again: ‘Sig, you won’t ever leave, will you?’

‘No,’ she had whispered, and then she had cried too, and it had been her turn to be comforted.

Bard had gone that night to Golden Dragon, and had done so every night since then. Sometimes they would scream at each other for hours about it: how he was killing himself, how he was turning himself into everything he hated. And sometimes Sigrun thought that she couldn’t blame him; that she couldn’t imagine how he must feel, or what he must think. Then she would remember her own ma, and she would tell herself that she did know; and could help him, if he’d only agree to be helped.

Bard didn’t want to be helped.

He’d tell her that drinking himself to death was protecting the honour of his bloodline. He’d tell her that breaking the line of shame stretching from Girion all the way to himself would be bad form. And he’d tell her that sons of Girion deserved nothing better than this: that they were all fated to be ale-soaked sponges, drinking away the memory of their ancestor’s failure to protect what he had loved most.

And yet on some occasions, he was remarkably like his old self: crossing the way for a nice little fight before breakfast, calling her Sig instead of Sigrun, trading gossip on the best fishing spots that she knew he wouldn’t share with anyone else. And yet at other times, she found him changed; so changed that he wasn’t Bard anymore. From drink he’d acquired a quick temper and a cruel tongue. Sometimes he would abuse her to her face. Months ago, if he had caught anybody speaking to her like that, he would very likely have attacked them where they stood. And though he’d always be back the next morning, staring at his boots and asking for confirmation of what he had done before earnestly apologising and promising that it would never happen again, it always did.

Sigrun violently blinked tears out of her eyes, pushed open Ric and Odell’s back door and forced Bard and everything to do with Bard from her mind; determined that for the next few hours, she would concentrate on pamphleteering and nothing else.

In the year since the bread riot at the market pool, pamphleteering activity had increased threefold in Esgaroth. The word was no longer associated with hooded strangers handing scraps of paper out to anybody who would take them, but with entire groups of people; sometimes three, sometimes thirty, who would do anything from devoting a portion of their wages to those in hardship, to sitting in smoke-filled back rooms and outhouses planning the overthrow of the Master.

Most pamphleteering clubs, whatever their leaning, liked to give themselves absurd, heroic-sounding names that made them seem more like a band of hardened warriors than a crowd of desperate young people who only wanted bread: ‘Sons of Dale’, one was called; ‘Heirs of Girion’ was another. Sigrun’s lot, however, simply called themselves ‘Number Three’; because theirs had been the third pamphleteering club founded in Laketown.

Number Three was a raucous and argumentative crowd of rowdy adolescents led by a permanently-disgruntled half-elf called Kell; known to everyone in Laketown because of the tremendous scandal that had occurred eighteen years previously when Kell’s (brunette) mother had given birth with her (red-headed) husband at her side, and the baby had popped out with a shining head of blond hair and a pair of ears that were far too sharp at the edges to be acceptably human.

Within hours Kell’s ma, a woman famous for her beauty and grace, as well as her virtue, had been disowned by her parents, thrown out by her husband and shunned by every person that she had trusted enough to ask for help. Within a week, she was dead; her bloated body found floating in the canal beneath the Master’s house; and the unfortunate child with the deformed ears had been adopted by the same community that had abandoned his mother; his two maiden aunts naming and raising him as a man of Laketown and encouraging him to grow his hair long so that it covered the abnormality that made him different.

Most of the time, Sigrun found Kell unbearable; largely because of his continued efforts to get her to recruit Bard to the cause, and his continued refusal to understand why she always failed to do so.

_‘You are taking the path of insurrection,’ Bard had told her, ‘that isn’t the path to take. There are other ways.’_

‘What does he mean, ‘there are other ways’?’ Kell had demanded the first time she had told him this, ‘ _what other ways_?’

‘He didn’t say,’ Sigrun had replied.

Kell had raised an eyebrow at her with a degree of superiority that had made Sigrun want to scream.

‘You might have asked him, Ma’am Sigrun.’

‘Perhaps the word ‘no’ is enough for me where my friends are concerned.’

‘Snivelry.’

Sigrun had left pamphleteering that night convinced that a more self-satisfied ignoramus could not exist on this earth. She was comforted by the fact that her opinion was shared by the majority of Number Three, who knew Kell well enough to respect him without liking him; a form of wisdom that was not shared by most of Laketown’s young ladies, who never got close enough to him to realise that a smidgeon of elven beauty could not cure a person from being an insufferable arse; or indeed that such beauty might conceal intolerance, ill-humour, a persecution complex, a ferocious temper, and an unquenchable hatred of elves that Sigrun found hilarious; most especially on the occasions when he would disappear, without warning, to the Woodland Realm, and come back two weeks later in a worse mood that when he had left.

And yet he was the only one of them who could command and be obeyed; and the only one that everybody listened to. They never bothered trying to elect a new leader, because anybody else would be eaten alive within minutes. He was the only one amongst them who lived for the fall of the Master, and nothing else.

At this precise moment, Number Three’s weekly meeting had yielded no heroic speeches or pearls of wisdom, only absurdity, as Torwald engaged in a one-sided shouting match with Kell on the vitally unimportant subject of whether or not alcohol should be permitted at meetings. Torwald, bellowing as he brandishing a bottle, was clearly in favour, pacing up and down and threatening to break the bottle over Kell’s head. Kell, sitting calmly in his corner, was telling him in an infuriatingly-calm tone of voice that they could not concentrate at meetings if they were drunk, and the others in the room, amused as the conflict turned to the moral implications of getting drunk in the presence of female members, began to take bets on who would win: Brand and Stig leading bets for the faction in favour of Tor, their hosts Odell and Ric collecting bets for those convinced of the opposite.

‘How can you expect me to come up with bright ideas when I’m sober, Kell?’ Torwald was storming.

‘Given the distinct un-brightness of your ideas, I fail to perceive the problem,’ Kell cynically replied; eliciting a look of devastating unhappiness from Torwald, a storm of catcalling and booing from everybody else, and then an abrupt silence as the eyes of each person in the room flickered to the newest, unwelcome pair of eyes that had appeared at the door.

It was Alfrid Lickspittle.

‘What are _you_ doing here?’ Kell sighed; as though suddenly inconvenienced.

‘You need to take better care of your secrets, elfling,’ Alfrid jeered, ‘the drunk on the corner told me where the meeting was.’

‘How dare you speak to him like that?’ Torwald demanded; conveniently forgetting that he himself had been saying far worse not twenty seconds ago.

‘What are you doing here, Alfrid?’ Kell repeated; not looking put-out in the least.

Alfrid folded his arms across his scrawny chest.

‘I’m here for Mrs Bard.’

Sigrun groaned.

‘Could you please not call me Mrs Bard?’

Alfrid looked rather disappointed by her reaction.

‘My da,’ he said, ‘begs to know if you might like to come round and pay your true love’s bail.’

Sigrun stared at him.

‘He’s in _gaol_?’

‘Yes.’

‘Since when?’

‘Just in. Da doesn’t like having him there. He says gaol is not for “decent folk” like Bard the drunk.’

‘Don’t you call him that!’

Sigrun pushed out her chair and stood; her mind already across town and in that place as she crossed the room to the door.

‘You are excused, Ma’am Sigrun,’ Kell said.

‘I don’t recall needing your permission to be excused, Kell,’ Sigrun snapped, and slammed the door behind her as she followed Alfrid into the night.

* * *

 

Bard stirred. When he noticed Sigrun looking down on him, he groaned; burying his face in the pillow of straw, with what she hoped was shame.

‘Who told you?’ he mumbled.

‘Alfrid,’ she replied.

‘That loathsome dwarf,’ Bard snarled, with a savagery that made her jump.

‘Alfrid said you had a fight with someone over some girl you both wanted.’

Bard stared at her; his gaze drawing her eyes upwards to his.

‘You mean… like a whore?’

‘Yes. I mean like a whore.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘What do you mean, ‘impossible’?’

‘Just that. It is not possible.’

Sigrun’s brow wrinkled in bemusement. There was no lie in the grey of his eyes or the lines of his face, and Sigrun was surprised to find that she believed him; even if she didn’t understand him.

‘So… you _haven’t_ been frequenting ladies of the night?’

‘ _No_.’

There was an awkward silence.

Bard broke it.

‘How can you ask me such a stupid question? _You_?’

Sigrun didn’t answer, and there must have been something in her face that told him there was more to her silence than respect for the principles of rhetoric; for he fixed his eyes warily upon her and waited agitatedly, as he always did when he knew that a lecture was coming.

‘Bard.’

‘Sig.’

‘I think you know what I’m going to say.’

Bard pulled a face at her.

“Stop shoving ale down your throat, Bard,” he shrilly and unflatteringly imitated, “drink is poison.”

‘Those are your words,’ Sigrun hastened to point out, ‘not mine.’

Bard folded his arms.

‘Well I’m tired of hearing them,’ he said.

‘And I’m tired of hearing that you’re tired of hearing,’ she replied; and she saw his defences rise immediately; his eyes flashing threateningly to hers; the eyes of a warrior facing down a foe; and she hated it, because it had never been that way between them. They hadn’t needed to be on their guard; they hadn’t needed to mind what they said; they hadn’t needed any of that.And she stared and stared at him, expecting any moment to see her pale, grave, impossible friend staring back at her and telling her that this was all a dream. Instead, there was this other person: red-faced and loud and forgettable; the kind of person that she could see in the street each day without ever bothering to find out his name.

But he wasn’t a stranger in the street; he was Bard; and she wanted to speak to him, but she didn’t know how. It was like reaching out to a predator in the dark, and hoping that it wouldn’t bite.

‘Bard,’ Sigrun murmured, looking into his eyes, ‘I know that…I know that you’re afraid…’

‘Do you?’ Bard snapped, in a hard voice that was not his own.

‘Your ma dying, and then your da straight after…’ Sigrun mumbled, trying to sound kind and patient and good: everything that she was not, ‘of course it…it hurts…I understand that –’

He turned white.

‘Don’t you –’

‘Bard –’

‘ _Don’t you dare say that you understand_ ,’ Bard spat; his voice shaking with anger and his eyes blazing with it; his hands balling into fists and his teeth clenching to swallow his words; ‘ _nobody understands_. I watched her _die_ and waste away and draw blood instead of breath for three years… _three years_ … while _he_ spent every cent he had on drink instead of getting her a doctor; and then, just when she’s free of him, he chooses to follow her, to torment her in the next life; as if this one wasn’t enough for him –’

Sigrun thought that was rather unjust.

‘You think _that’s_ why he did it?’ she posed.

‘ _Why else would he do it?_ ’ Bard sneered.

She felt lost again. She didn’t know how to explain. But somehow she felt compelled to, because the question had tormented her since its birth, and sometimes she thought she had answered it; sometimes not, but maybe her answer was still better than what he was allowing himself to imagine.

‘Why…’ Sigrun stammered; ‘why do _you_ drink?’

‘So my head will shut up,’ Bard growled.

‘The night Ma’am Gerda died,’ she asked, ‘was your da drunk?’

‘Sober,’ Bard drawled.

‘And the morning of the funeral, was he drunk?’ she asked.

‘Sober,’ he drawled.

His tone was beginning to irritate her.

‘So your father sobers up for the first time in ten years to find his wife dead and it doesn’t surprise you that he kills himself?’ Sigrun snapped.

‘Why are you defending him?’ Bard demanded; glaring at her.

Sigrun rolled her eyes.

‘I’m not defending him!’

‘You _are_!’

‘I’m just trying to understand him!’

‘Why? So you’ll understand me? Like father like son?’

‘I understand you just fine already.’

‘That makes one of us.’

‘Will you listen to me, please?’

‘No.’

‘Give me two minutes, at least!’

Bard growled in frustration; not looking at her. He folded his hands so that they stood claw-like against his clothes, and spoke.

‘Fine,’ he snarled.

Sigrun breathed.

‘Imagine being a drunk.’

‘I don’t need to imagine being a drunk.’

Sigrun breathed deeply, and forced herself to continue. If she got angry with him, she would never finish.

‘Imagine that…you drink all day every day to forget how hard your life is. And all day long there’s this person – sometimes in front of you, sometimes in the corner of your vision, but they’re always there. You see them no matter how drunk you are. They move, and walk, and talk –’

‘I’m bored,’ Bard drawled.

‘You get used to seeing the person there,’ Sigrun pressed; ignoring him; ‘eventually, it’s like they’ve been there for a thousand years. They become like your right arm – what you expect to see each time you open your eyes. Then one day, you don’t drink. You blink. And the person is gone. That same person who you expect to see each time you open your eyes. And they’ve been sick; fading away in front of you without you even noticing, for years, for all that time that you could have been with them, told them that they’re your right arm, been their right arm as well. But they’re dead. And you didn’t. And you’re seized suddenly by the realisation that this isn’t just a person you know: this is the person you married. This is the person you love. This is the person that you cannot live without. And all of that love comes back to you; the reason you married her; the reason you see her each time you open your eyes. And it seems to you that until that moment, you never truly loved her. And now she’s gone. And there’s nothing to be done.’

Bard was silent, and unresponsive.

‘Do you wonder that he wanted to die?’ Sigrun asked.

‘He didn’t love her,’ Bard replied.

‘You don’t know that,’ Sigrun insisted.

‘You’re as innocent as a child,’ Bard accused.

‘I lost my ma to a _dragon_ , Bard. Isn’t that experience of some sort?’

‘That is barely –’

‘Bard –’

‘THAT IS BARELY COMPARABLE!!!’

The roar came so abruptly, so viciously and was so utterly unlike him that she felt fear sweep through her like a snowstorm. She stayed rooted to the spot as Bard sat mutinously up on the prison bunk with a murderous light in his eyes, as though he wanted to kill her with his bare hands.

She knew it was the drink, but the knowledge didn’t help at all.

_So my da wasting away each day doesn’t count? My ma doesn’t count? My life is ‘barely comparable’?_

And she thought about her da who couldn’t move; who couldn’t even talk; her da who could only look, without looking. She thought about her ribs that stuck out, and her bones that were her body; she thought about her lack of life, her hunger, her weakness; her arms that looked more like a boy’s than a girl’s; the cadaver that stared back at her each time she looked into the surface of the Lake.

And the hurt boiling up inside her was horrific; reaching out to parts of her that she had fortified and locked and killed in order to survive; smashing through her walls as though they were made of glass.

‘Who are you?’ Sigrun quietly asked.

‘ _Why are you still talking to me_?’ Bard seethed.

She bit on her tongue to stop herself from crying. She wanted to stop talking – to save herself – but she couldn’t; she needed to explain to him; her mouth was doing it for her, even though she didn’t want it to.

‘Because…because…because I’ve never minded…starving to death and freezing to death and knowing nothing but death. I haven’t minded being in this _horrible_ place with all these _horrible_ people who bleed the ones they should be saving. I haven’t minded any of it, because _at least there was you_ : something good _somewhere; somewhere_ –’

Bard laughed at her.

“Good somewhere,” he cruelly snickered, ‘there isn’t any good anywhere, Sigrun, least of all in me. Accept it. GROW UP.’

‘ _Who are you?_ ’ Sigrun whispered.

‘If you ask me that one more time,’ Bard snarled, ‘I swear I’ll –’

‘What?’ Sigrun snapped, ‘what will you do?’

Their eyes met in a moment of absolute confrontation, of war. Sigrun breathed deeply.

_Stay calm. Be calm. Don’t get angry. Don’t get angry._

‘It’s the drink or our friendship,’ she said in a rush, before she could stop herself.

Bard looked disdainful.

‘What?’

‘Pick one,’ Sigrun tore on, ‘both I and the drink are tired of your having both.’

Bard gave her a look that was horror and pain and anger all at once.

‘Can you make this _thing_ inside me go away?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Sigrun replied, because nobody could. She knew that.

Bard leaned forwards and looked at her with scorn.

‘ _Then what exactly is the point of you?_ ’

Sigrun felt her lips part, and her soul turn to powder as it came crashing down within her: taking away her dual-ness, and ignoring her silent screams as it cut her, making her a half instead of a whole.

She felt herself beginning to tremble like she’d slept a night on the ice.

Outside her storm, Bard was stinking of ale and laughing at her.

‘That means I pick the drink,’ he declared, ‘you can get out now.’

She couldn’t move.

He took that as an invitation to keep laughing.

‘You didn’t think I’d do it, did you?’

Sigrun felt herself come back, and she glared at him with every fire and flame that was left to her.

‘You curse _yourself_ ,’ she said.

She got up, closed the cell door, winced as she heard the gaoler lock it, and went to Alfrid out front.

When she paid Bard’s bail, she slipped an extra silver into Alfrid’s palm.

_No supper._

‘Keep him here at least a week before letting him out,’ she commanded, ‘do _not_ give him drink.’

‘What if someone else pays up?’ Alfrid wanted to know.

She slipped another silver into his palm. He shut up.

_No supper tomorrow either._

Sigrun went out into the night. It was freezing. The cold swept into every part of her that was raw and bloody; packing ice onto her soul’s amputation.

She briefly considered going back to pamphleteering – the meeting wouldn’t have ended yet – but when next she looked, after walking…somewhere…she was on Ingaborg’s front step, watching the door open.

Her friend looked at her in alarm; as though she had presented herself without a limb.

‘Are you _alright_?’ Ingaborg asked.

Sigrun considered how to answer the question, then shook her head; tears beginning to boil from her eyes and sobs to turn her throat to charcoal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The concept of the pamphleteers is shamelessly stolen from Les Amis de l’ABC.


	9. Chapter 9

An Amputation: Part Two

She Is The Arrow

Bard’s first instinct was to go to Golden Dragon – the week without drink had been ghastly – but he found himself wandering home instead; his mind in such turmoil that he scarcely perceived the cold around him.

He’d been woken up, that morning, by an awful dream that was really a memory; in which Sigrun pouted sullenly at him and muttered ‘You curse yourself’; her face bearing no trace of hurt; her eyes bearing all the hurt that her face concealed.

A self-loathing so deep it hurt him had invaded every part of his being, and in his mind he had seen himself remaining silent; saying nothing; not hurting her. He had seen himself listening to her; listening to her story about his ma being the right arm that his da had only noticed when it was gone. He had seen himself shutting up until the end, then saying…he didn’t know, something suitably clumsy about Sig being the same thing for him: something that would make her happy, or at the very least make her laugh.

Then Alfrid Lickspittle had kicked him in the ribs and told him he was out, and the dream had faded out of the world at the same moment that Bard faded into it; the hope that the dream was real fleeing with it.

Bard had rolled onto his side and told Alfrid to go away and find another person to interest in his little games. Alfrid had remarked that he already had, but that he hadn’t seen her in a while. Bard had demanded to know who ‘she’ was and why she would be interested in games. And then the whole sorry business had come out and made him feel worse than he did already.

_Oh, Sig._

She’d paid two silvers to keep him in gaol. In gaol and away from drink. Two days’ worth of food, maybe three. And as the prison gate shut behind him, expelling him into a cold so fierce it made him gasp, he saw her face in front of him; felt her voice in his throat as it cracked:

 _I haven’t minded being in this horrible place with all these horrible people who bleed the ones they should be saving. I haven’t minded any of it, because_ at least there was you.

And he had laughed at her.

The shame was an inferno within him. The loss of her – because he didn’t doubt that he had lost her – it was –

He squeezed his eyes shut to stop them from watering.

_Sig, I can’t – I’m so sorry, please –_

He’d been drunk out of his mind, but that was no excuse. He couldn’t unsay his words – even if she did, by some miracle, forgive him – that her own struggle was nothing compared to his; that she didn’t understand; that she _couldn’t_ understand; that he didn’t need her; that he could do without her as long as he could drink without restraint.

He couldn’t do without her as long as anything. She was all of him. He loved her.

He expected the realisation to hit him, and incapacitate him. He had heard people say that it was like a lightning strike; a glorious, earthquake-like shift as the world ceased to be the world, and became a person instead.

He experienced nothing of the sort, because Sig had always been the world. What he felt was like walking out of prison, and seeing the sky for the first time. It was a kind of peace; a realisation of the beauty of something that had always been there.

And he had treated her like the dirt beneath his feet.

He saw her face whether his eyes were open or closed; her composure snow-like in its whiteness. He saw the bones in her shoulders sticking out through her shirt; the fierce, protective, misplaced love in her eyes each time she spoke about her da. He saw her turn her face away as she remembered that her mother was gone; felt her ribs beneath the palms of his hands as he told her that she was too thin to be healthy, as she replied, ‘so are you.’

 _That is barely comparable_ , he had shouted at her.

_That is barely comparable._

_Who am I?_

He reached home, and hesitated outside his door; his fingers welding to the handle in the cold. He glanced quickly across the way. Sig’s door was closed.

It took every inch of self-restraint he possessed not to cross the way, break the door down and beg for forgiveness.

Because an apology was not going to be enough this time.

He pushed open the door and went into the house; ignoring his body as it screamed at him for liquid relief from the agonising throb and beat of reality made razor-sharp. He busied himself with tasks that had been normal before drink had been normal – throwing open the windows to let out the smell of sweat and ale, heaving empty half-pint barrels of ale out of the window and into the canal – busying his hands while his mind went mad. With guilt. With Sig.

His body was numbing itself with his resistance of habit. Every moment, he wanted to leave, and knock on her door: ask her something, tell her something, insult the frizz in her hair, if he couldn’t find anything else. Every move he made; every thought he had; seemed linked somehow to her; to her being there; to finding her if she was not there. How had he never noticed it before?

_Because before, you hadn’t done what you have done. Before, you could take your own decency for granted._

That was why he could not apologise now. That was why he could not tell her. He could not treat her like some piece of filth from the gutter, then storm in a week later with ‘I’m sorry and I love you.’ He could not efface his words with more words, because words were no longer things that she could trust. He needed to act before he could speak – to prove himself worthy of her forgiveness – and he had no idea how to do it.

And suddenly the room was freezing as a glacial wind blew down off the Mountain; stirring the thin, ragged blankets of his parents’ bed so that it appeared inhabited by ghosts; making the ancient, half-rusted pots and pans on their rusty ceiling hooks clink and bang together. The pantry door slammed shut, making him jump and drop the kettle he was carrying.

And as he stared at the door that was usually open, he perceived his da’s bow; suspended on it by a hook; forgotten.


	10. Chapter 10

An Open Window: Part One

In which Bard and Sigrun are sixteen

Most pamphleteer groups disagreed on the question of the Master’s son Hamar. Some believed him sincere in his talk of revolution, bread and equality for all; while others believed him to be a clumsy and indiscreet spy who scuttled home to daddy each day with an interesting list of names.

Sigrun didn’t care enough about Hamar to think either. To her, he was simply an idiot who happened to be the Master’s son. Tonight, however, she was being forced to care about him, as he would, for the first time, be attending Number Three’s weekly meeting, albeit blindfolded.

There had been uproar when Kell had first announced his intention.

‘It’s official,’ Brand had declared, ‘you’ve lost your mind.’

‘What if he recognises our _voices_?’ Stig had demanded.

‘What if someone _follows_ him?’ Ric had put to the floor.

Kell had allowed the tumult to continue for a few moments, before slamming his palm down on the table with a sound that went off like a firecracker.

There was instant silence as Kell glared at them in that penetrating way that made the hairs on the back of most people’s necks stand up.

‘Hamar knows that I am your leader,’ he had growled, ‘so if anybody gets arrested, it’ll be me. Satisfied?’

‘ _No_!’ Torwald had shouted, to raucous cheers as Sigrun, bored, had also intervened.

‘Let’s at least be mature enough to listen to what he has to say!’ she had roared across the clamour, ‘if we succeed in bringing down the Master, then having a pamphleteer as his successor could do little harm.’

‘And if he betrays us?’ Torwald had demanded, ‘what then?’

‘If he betrays us,’ Sigrun had replied, ‘I’ll slit his throat myself.’

Kell, who was used to her opposing everything he said or did, had looked at her with an expression of blank astonishment, before hastily beating down the corners of his mouth as they began to turn upwards into a smile.

Sigrun had rolled her eyes at that. Heaven forbid that the marble man should _smile_ once in a while.

Not that she could talk. She’d been a walking misery for the past year; largely because Bard hadn’t spoken to her for its entire duration; and though they lived in a small town, and opposite each other, she hardly saw him at all. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was avoiding her, but that was the sort of thing that the Bard _she_ knew would do. That other person that had come alive in the gaol a year ago: he wasn’t the Bard she knew, and as to what he did, or why, she could not say that she knew, or cared. She only wished that he would stop spending every waking moment in the alleyway behind his house; peppering the opposite wall with arrows as though it were his mortal enemy and reminding her, with that constant thudding of wood upon wood, that he was alive, and not her friend.

‘– so then he shoves this bunch of _weeds_ in my face,’ Ingaborg laughed, her arm linked through Sigrun’s as they walked together to pamphleteering, ‘and takes hold of my arm and tries to _kiss_ me!’

‘Uh…who?’ Sigrun asked; blinking.

‘Alfrid Lickspittle!’ Ingaborg exclaimed; elbowing her in the ribs; ‘aren’t you listening?’

Sigrun stared at Inga in astonishment; rather disappointed that her introspection had caused her to miss what was evidently an uproarious story.

‘Alfrid Lickspittle tried to kiss you?’ she repeated, just in case she had heard wrong.

‘ _Yes!_ ’ Ingaborg replied; barely able to contain her mirth; ‘this afternoon, at the market pool!’

Sigrun pretended to think about it.

‘You mean he likes girls now instead of sheep?’

The two of them burst out laughing, and giggling pushed open the meeting room door; earning themselves a few choice glares from some of Number Three’s more stick-up-the-arse members, for whom their business was solemn one at which laughter should be forbidden.

‘We’re the laughing stock of Esgaroth anyway without being the only club to admit _women_ ,’ Hakon scoffed, turning up his disapproving nose at them.

‘Incorrect!’ Solweig shouted from her usual place at the door, ‘we’ve only been the laughing stock of Esgaroth since _you_ joined.’

There was laughter and hooting, as there always was at Number Three whenever any kind of dispute was in hand, and as Ingaborg and Sigrun pushed their way into the crown and found seats, Kell entered, with Bard at his side.

* * *

 

Sigrun stared. She couldn’t stop herself. She didn’t know if the ensuing silence existed in real life, or only in her head.

Because Bard wasn’t how she remembered him.

The first thing that she noticed was his height, which was that of a man rather than a boy. From somewhere or other he had acquired a posture, an uprightness, where before he had always slouched mercilessly, as though he were trying to hide from the world.

His face was freshly-shaven, and pale, with not a trace of the drink-induced ruddiness that she had come to associate with him; _has he stopped drinking???_ Sigrun thought, and when she looked immediately at his large grey eyes, they were shining with that beautiful internal glow that they had always had before death had burnt it out.

_He looks…_

‘– magnificent,’ Ingaborg obligingly finished for her; sighing wistfully, ‘what’s he doing here? Has he joined up?’

‘I hope _not_ ,’ Sigrun declared; glaring furiously at her lap and trying to quell the lump that was rising in her throat; for when she closed her eyes she could still see him and hear him.

_That means I pick the drink. You can get out now._

Sigrun was brought back to the world by a painful poke to the ribs, and only just had time to realise that Ingaborg was indiscreetly warning her about something before Bard had successfully plonked himself down next to her, as though the last time they had spoken had been ten minutes ago.

A thousand retorts filled Sigrun’s mind, and she was about to tell him to take his arrogant attitude off somewhere else, when Bard turned to her very slowly; his eyes not daring to meet hers; his face redder than a sunset.

‘Hello, Sig,’ he quietly pronounced.

She wanted to hug him, then hit him, then tell him that her name was Sigrun, and nothing else.

‘Hello,’ Sigrun guardedly replied; the very essence of distant politeness; and she looked away from him with relief as Hamar was brought in with a cloth binding his eyes.

* * *

 

Bard had intended to sit down next to her and greet her confidently, like other boys did. He had approached without hesitation, and had sat down without hesitation. Then she had turned to look at him, and his confidence had stumbled out of the room and straight into the canal.

Since that night in the gaol, he’d been avoiding her. It had been no mean feat, especially since they lived opposite each other. But he had imagined that it was what she would want, and that when he did eventually think it appropriate to speak to her again, it would be easy, because she would be just the same as she had always been.

Then she had turned to look at him, and everything that he had kept inside him – hidden so it wouldn’t change his resolve; concealed until he could prove himself worthy of it – had come crashing over him like a firestorm: her merciless blue eyes that darkened in anger at the sight of him; her sad, expressive face with its firm-set mouth and strange, square jaw that others found masculine and ungracious; the wild, yellow fury of her hair that might not have had a brush put to it in ten years. And as he looked at her, he began to remember things: her smile that was his smile too, her walk that was also his walk, the two of them like cause and consequence; twin winds that blew together or not at all. He felt his absence from her like a wound; like an unnatural state of one-ness that he was not born to be in, and it had taken every inch of resolve he possessed not to embrace her then and there and have her with him, if only for an instant.

_You are making yourself ridiculous._

‘Hello, Sig,’ he had managed to stumble out as her eyes burned him like vengeance.

‘Hello,’ she had composedly replied; polite, but distant, _what do you expect?_ he thought, and he decided at once to leave Sig alone for the rest of the evening as Hamar was brought in with his eyes bound and plonked unceremoniously down onto a chair facing Number Three’s members.

The noise as the Master’s son sat down was appalling: there was hooting, and catcalling, and shouting of every kind of insult, from comments on Hamar’s manhood to speculations on how well his head was attached to his shoulders. Bard looked to Kell, expecting him to intervene, but Number Three’s leader did nothing but watch; his presence glacially cold and almost indifferent, for all the light dancing in his preposterous blond hair.

Hamar was beginning to lose his composure, and consequently, to fiddle with his blindfold.

‘What’s happening?’ he squeaked in barely-concealed terror, ‘what is – what – Kell – Kell???’

The half-elf did not look impressed.

‘I am here, Hamar,’ Kell said.

‘Safe conduct!’ Hamar exclaimed; his right hand toying with the back of the blindfold, ‘you promised me safe conduct!’

‘I did,’ Kell replied; looking at him with quiet ridicule, ‘and I will keep my word.’

‘You will?’

‘You needn’t worry. My men and women would never harm you unless on my command. If you were to make one further move to loosen that blindfold, however, you would die before you hit the ground.’

Hamar dropped his hand with an abruptness that made Number Three burst out laughing all over again.

‘Silence!’ Kell roared.

The silence was instantaneous.

‘Say what you came to say, Hamar,’ he continued.

The Master’s son straightened up in his chair instantly, as though readying himself to perform a speech that he had prepared beforehand.

‘No pamphleteer club has the power or the resources to topple my father single-handedly,’ he declared in a booming voice, ‘I have tried to start my own club in order to remedy this, but nobody will trust me –’

‘That’s because only an idiot would trust you!’ Bard interrupted, as hooting, catcalling and uproarious laughter began to drown out the rest of Hamar’s speech.

* * *

 

Sigrun watched with satisfaction as Kell directed a glare at Bard that could have wilted an entire forest. Bard stared back at the half-elf, apparently unaffected by his signature instrument of intimidation. The same could not be said for the rest of Number Three, however, who promptly slipped back into silence like naughty children caught with both hands in the biscuit tin.

Hamar, whether from opportunism or from whatever stupid training in oratory that rich children received, took the silence as a signal to continue.

‘I have spoken to Einar at Sons of Dale and Thorald at Heirs of Girion,’ he declared, ‘and they say that they would willingly form a coalition with me, and with you, in order to bring this Reign of Terror to an end. That is why I have come to you tonight. To propose that we unite, and do together what we cannot do alone.’

The ensuing uproar was immediately cut off by Kell.

‘SILENCE!!!’ he roared, ‘raise your hand if you wish to speak!’

Half the hands in the room went up; including Sigrun’s.

Kell pointed at Brand.

‘He lies!’ Brand shouted, ‘I see the guilt in his eyes! He’s working for his father!’

‘If he is, then he’s unlikely to feel much guilt about it,’ Kell drawled, before pointing at Solweig, ‘next.’

‘See that this ‘agreement’ with Einar and Thorald exists before you say yes or no!’ Solweig exclaimed, ‘if he _is_ lying, then all he needs is a ‘yes’ to send all of us to prison.’

‘Noted,’ Kell said; pointing at Sigrun, ‘next.’

‘If we say no,’ Sigrun observed, ‘Hamar may still tell his father that we said yes. In that light, our saying yes or no is of little importance.’

‘It’s true,’ Kell remarked, ‘the police do not think on the truth of crimes committed, only on the arrests that they are asked to make.’

‘If that’s true,’ Hamar protested; fidgeting once more in his chair; ‘then why am I here? Why didn’t I have the police follow me?’

There was a hush rather than a silence, followed abruptly by a shout.

‘Prove it,’ Bard declared.

Every head in the room turned unanimously in Bard’s direction. Sigrun looked expectantly at Kell, waiting for him to tell Bard to either raise his hand or shut up.

The half-elf did nothing, and waited for Bard to continue.

‘Prove your allegiance to us and to others,’ Bard was continuing; his voice carrying across the heads of Number Three, ‘and perhaps we’ll consider entering this “coalition” that you propose.’

There was an immediate hubbub, both of agreement and disagreement, which concealed any external signs of the rage boiling up in Sigrun’s chest.

 _He’s only just arrived, and he’s_ already _running things? Who does he think he is? And why is Kell is letting him?_

She looked in Kell’s direction for the relevant signs of aggravation. Number Three’s leader, however, was sitting quietly in his corner looking half-attentive, half-amused, and she was about to protest when Hamar spoke _again_ , as though he were taking Bard’s words seriously!

‘In effect, you are asking me to make a gesture?’ Hamar proposed.

‘We are,’ Kell confirmed.

Hamar smiled in a way that made Sigrun want to punch him.

‘Would an open window in the city armoury suffice?’

The promise of weapons shocked the crowd into silence, and Sigrun felt discomfort welling up inside her. People were looking at each other in dread; but with the same sort of dread with which they might look at something dangerous, but irresistible.

It was a tragic testimony to what life had become that one could look on the promise of weaponry, and see it as a temptation: more of a temptation than money, more of a temptation than bread. For with weapons would come revenge, and with weapons could come war. Sigrun felt the possibility stir in her blood; felt the same desire for destruction that she had felt as a girl on the edge of the market pool, a stone clutched in her hand and a scream clutched in her throat.

‘We must think on this, Hamar,’ Kell declared, ‘it will take longer than a few minutes to discuss.’

‘Come to me when you have decided,’ Hamar replied; bowing his head in acquiescence.

‘Convey him with safe conduct.’

Hamar was led out of the room as unceremoniously as he had been led into it, and Number Three spent the next four hours fighting; with poor Kell exhausting himself in his attempts to keep the proceedings as civilised as possible.

Sigrun heard none of it; her mind caught up in remembering what Bard had said to her a year ago when she had tried to convince him to join up; his sombre grey eyes contemplating her with a humanity that had infuriated her at the time.

_You are taking the path of insurrection. That isn’t the path to take. There are other ways._

She looked at him now; the desire for vengeance as rife on his face as it was on anybody else’s, and she could not, would not, believe in him.

_A year ago he would hear nothing of insurrection; now he wants to help make it happen? What does he want? What does he get out of it?_

She did not believe for a second that he had suddenly become a believer. After that night in gaol, a year ago, she did not believe anything but the worst of him. He must have some other agenda in turning pamphleteer; though she couldn’t imagine what. He had never had any talent for deviousness. That particular affinity had always been hers.

So when Kell closed the meeting, she stormed up to where he was arranging his papers and elbowed her way to the front of the line of other people, all wanting to speak to or shout at him.

‘Halfelven!’ she exclaimed in indignation.

Kell looked up in fury at the use of the hated nickname, then relaxed at once when he saw who was using it.

‘What is it, Ma’am Sigrun?’ he politely asked.

‘ _Bard_ is what it is!’ Sigrun cried, unable to believe that he could ask her such a stupid question, ‘he’s never shown the slightest interest in pamphleteering, now all of a sudden you’re _arriving_ with him and letting him participate in meetings like he’s been here forever? What’s your game?’

‘What is _yours_?’ Kell enquired, looking quietly exasperated, ‘he expressed a desire to join up and lend his voice to our cause, as have dozens of other young men over the past year. On what grounds would you have me deny him what has been granted to so many others?’

‘He’s been refusing to so much as _listen_ to the idea of joining up for _years_!’ Sigrun exclaimed, ‘his deciding to do it now is _dubious_ and _suspicious_ ; why can’t you see?’

‘Because _I_ am not still in love with him, Ma’am Sigrun,’ Kell retaliated; a look of immense satisfaction decorating his stupid elf face as Sigrun felt her own turn red with anger.

‘I am…I am _not_ still in love with him!’ Sigrun shrilly declared, ‘that is, I…I never _was_ in love with him in the first place!’

‘And the moon is made of green cheese.’

‘ _Kell_!!!’

‘Was there anything else?’

‘He’s a _drunk_ , is that good enough for you? On most nights, he can’t even stand up straight!’

‘That is news to me. He did a bread run with me the other night and appeared prodigiously capable of standing up straight.’

That was news to Sigrun as well; a bread run being pamphleteer-speak for stealing _lembas_ bread intended for market and leaving it outside people’s front doors. It was not something that could be done when drunk, or indeed when one possessed anything apart from nerves of steel.

‘I am sorry if this is difficult,’ Kell was saying, ‘but I am not willing to send him away simply because his presence makes you uncomfortable. I commiserate with you, but there it is.’

Kell picked up his papers, ignored the blind fury on her face, walked to the door, and turned.

‘Oh, by the way,’ the half-elf said, ‘you’ll be doing a bread run with him tomorrow night. I advise you to set whatever issues you may have aside by then. Good evening.’


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello awesome people! Apologies that the chapter is so short: I have been very unwell.
> 
> *** Warning
> 
> This chapter contains a brief allusion to rape. Please do not read if this will act as a trigger.

An Open Window: Part Two

 

 

 

Sigrun spat out a mouthful of blood and groaned softly; ashamed at the pitiful noise as it vomited from her mouth; ashamed of her own confidence in herself: for when she and Bard had met earlier that evening for their bread run, they had encountered no problems, and she had taken this as an augury that the rest of the evening would go the same way.

They had certainly been _prepared_ for problems; Sigrun carrying her knife and Bard carrying his bow, which looked so poorly and so beaten-up that she could not believe it was the same weapon responsible for that infernal

_Thump._ _Thump._ _Thump._

that punctured her sleep and her quiet moments alone as Bard practised furiously in the alleyway behind his house.

Everything had remained quiet as they had opened up the storehouse with the key that Kell had acquired from some mysterious contact of his in the Woodland Realm who always brought the bread down the river. They had traipsed across town in complete silence with their stolen bags of lembas bread in hand. Bard hadn’t said a word to her; she had not spoken to him in spite of having a thousand things to ask him; and she could tell by the permanent sense of unease that seemed to radiate from his person that he also felt himself to be on one side of a gap.

 _And whose fault is that_? Sigrun thought, venturing a glance at him from the corner of her eye, and when Bard looked back at her from his extraordinary new height that she couldn’t get used to, she gave him a resounding glare; taking great pleasure in the way that his grey eyes flickered gravely downwards and his cheeks turned pale. She looked straight ahead of her once more and ignored him completely; her footsteps padding softly as they headed towards the part of town that would be getting bread tonight; the streets deathly quiet and utterly empty of life.

It was then that she walked straight into the arms of three of the Masters guards, and Bard promptly disappeared; melting away into the surrounding buildings like a ghost.

The surprise she felt rather disappointed her. One would think that running _from_ danger while she was _in_ it was the sort of thing that he would never do – but there was no point getting upset about it.

At first, the guards didn’t seem to want anything from her but sport.

‘What have we here?’ one snickered in delight.

‘A lady of the night?’ another suggested as the third one began to laugh.

‘A lady coming back from taking a piss,’ Sigrun drawled; trying to walk past them as quickly as she could.

Then one of them seized her elbows.

She tried to step out of his grip. Her back hit the chest of the other he was with, who held her hard while the third wrested the sack from her grip. And all of a sudden she could smell drink wafting off them in waves, and the first embers of fear began to stir within her.

‘Shouldn’t you be harassing robbers or murderers instead of ordinary citizens who just want to empty their bowels?’ Sigrun demanded, with a bravery that she did not feel as the one who had taken the sack finally succeeded in opening it, and upended its contents into the muck beneath their feet.

The sight of all that bread going to waste made Sigrun’s blood boil like dragonfire, but before she could speak, or spit, or even scream, the third man had driven both of his fists into her stomach, and she dropped like a stone onto the ground; her lungs writhing inside her like flesh destroyed by mailed fists; then dying as her ribs were kicked and stripped and mauled; her hands held down; her legs held down by the weight of one who sat on top of her to stop her from struggling as her muscles screamed in agony and blood began to boil through her lips and choke up what little breath remained to her. She tried so, so hard to fight back; to get to her knife, to use it; but she was too small, too weak, too starved.

‘Anyone remember the punishment for pamphleteers caught stealing?’ one of them said.

 _The Master knows he’s being stolen from without knowing how and does_ nothing _,_ Sigrun thought, _stealing from someone like that doesn’t count as stealing; it doesn’t count –_

‘Don’t we whip them till they bleed?’ the second one was asking; putting his boot on Sigrun’s head and grinding her face into the dirt, ‘ever been whipped till you bled, girl?’

‘Boy?’ the third one proposed.

‘Maybe we should find out,’ the first one said.

It was then that she started screaming.

Hands were jerking her roughly around, hands were holding her down, hands were filling her mouth so she couldn’t scream anymore, hands were clawing at her breeches like knives, and her screams were turning to sobs that were drowned out by laughs: laughs which suddenly became screams; then silence at the sound of the air being torn rapidly in two: three times.

 _Thump._  
_Thump._  
_Thump._

And the hands dropped away from her, and their owners dropped away from her too; their bodies hitting the floor. And the thumping was so different when it hit flesh instead of wood: deeper, surer, something to do with the blood that came out, and ran, and splattered; something to do with life ending, instead of wood being pierced, to be pierced again.

She didn’t have to look, but she looked anyway. She dragged herself onto her elbow; her vision swimming with the fallen bodies of guards numbers one, two and three that had been alive one moment, and dead the next. And atop a flight of stairs just opposite her, staring down at her from a home, or a warehouse, was Bard; his bow trained on the fallen men; his hands perfectly steady as he surveyed the kill.


	12. Chapter 12

An Open Window: Part Three

 

Sigrun recalled nothing of what happened next except for a new smell that she presumed was blood; pungent and metallic as it spread over the rotting boards of the street.

What she _did_ recall was that by the time Bard had succeeded in half-dragging, half-carrying her across town to his house, she was arguing with him, though she couldn’t fathom why.

_It probably has something to do with his killing three people in cold blood. Maybe I’m in shock. Ha ha._

‘Sig,’ Bard grunted as he deposited her, squirming, into one of the moth-eaten armchairs, ‘you need a doctor.’

‘Doctors cost money,’ Sigrun growled; his hands on her shoulders and the worry on his face only serving to fuel her irritation, ‘doctors ask questions.’

‘Sig –’

‘Let go of me.’

Bard dropped his hands immediately, but insisted on dogging Sigrun’s steps like some stupid solicitous lover as she forced herself to her feet and hobbled to the cupboard.

The pain within her was volcanic as she opened the cupboard door and laughed bitterly at the contents.

‘You still keep drink in here,’ she chuckled mirthlessly.

‘I keep it so I remember,’ Bard replied; the fearless way that he pronounced his words ill-fitting the shame on his face, ‘what are you doing?’

‘Wow,’ Sigrun said, dodging his grasp as she closed the cupboard door and staggered to the cracked mirror with a bottle of brandy in hand, ‘that sounds like a load of dragon poo poo.’

‘What are you _doing_?’ Bard insisted, his eyes fixed on her as she uncorked the bottle of brandy and looked into the mirror.

A thousand bruised and cut versions of herself stared back at her as she poured the brandy straight onto the open wound on her forehead.

The pain was like death. The world faded. Bard shouted in horror. She heard him dart forward and catch her as she collapsed.

And the darkness around her felt like warmth.

* * *

 

She saw the guards drop one by one. The path each arrow took was a sharp shimmer of silver in the air, before the air turned red.

Then she saw him at the top of the stairs; the bow drawn to his chest with terrible accuracy. His hands did not shake. She expected them to. And yet the bow looked a part of his body: like it suited him. The thought made her sadder that she had felt in a very long time. Her friend was not a killer. It was not who he was.

As she stared at Bard, their eyes met, and she could tell that he was thinking the same thing. Then in her dream, his eyes began to turn yellow; like a bird of prey; like something that was made for killing; like something that was good at it.

She jolted awake. She was lying down. It was pitch black, her body was a throbbing mass of pain, and she had no idea where she was.

Then she caught the scent of the blanket she was wrapped in, and she was too tired and too weary to fling it away from her. She tucked herself deeper into Bard’s scent, breathing him in like a warmth that sank deep down to her bones, then forced herself to sit up, slowly; her fingers still clutching at the edge of the blanket.

Her muscles screamed in agony, and her pulse throbbed in wave after wave of unnatural crimson as she shuffled to Bard’s closet door, and pushed it open.

He was sitting on his parents’ bed in almost complete darkness with his back to her, with only the first, blue light of dawn lighting the room through the shutters. His head jerked slightly when he heard her stirring, but when she closed the closet door and hobbled forward, he did not move; his gaze fixed on the opposite wall.

His eyes were glowing black. His clothes were still spattered with the blood from earlier. And on his face was an expression of silent, suffering horror; as though he were looking into a mirror that only he could see, and saw a stranger staring back at him.

Sigrun sat wordlessly down next to him; the bed creaking like a scream beneath her. She looked down at Bard’s hands. They were shaking.

‘There were three of them,’ Bard said, not looking at her.

Sigrun, not knowing what to say, said nothing.

‘I killed three people,’ he murmured, as if to himself; his face a horror; more horrible to Sigrun that her own silence; ‘I’d do it again… if things went back again…if things were the same…but –’

Sigrun took his trembling hand. Bard looked at her. She could feel him looking at the bruises on her face and clenching up within himself.

‘I’m sorry I took so long,’ he mumbled; his eyes travelling upwards to the cut on her forehead.

‘I’m alive,’ Sigrun replied; much too loudly, in her sudden eagerness to make him feel better.

He smiled sadly at her ineptitude; his light making his eyes turn grey again. Then his smile disappeared as his mind turned inwards again, and he looked firmly at the wall in front of them.

‘One of them was younger than me…’ he muttered, ‘an idiot…I’d seen him sometimes…’

His other hand had covered hers. His fingers were lingering over her pulse.

‘You mustn’t think this is the sort of the thing that usually happens,’ Sigrun blurted, wishing he would let go of her hand but suddenly afraid of hurting his feelings, ‘at pamphleteering, this isn’t what normally happens –’

‘I don’t care about what ‘normally happens’ at pamphleteering,’ Bard declared; as though he were suddenly annoyed with her.

‘If you don’t care, then why did you join?’ she indignantly asked.

‘You know why I joined,’ Bard told her, equally exasperated, but still miserable enough to keep his voice down.

Sigrun looked at him not looking at her, and pulled her hands out of his, even though she didn’t understand.

‘I don’t know why you joined,’ she quietly declared.

Bard finally looked at her; his expression earnest, and calm.

‘Yes, you do.’

**Author's Note:**

> I humbly beg for comments and other miscellaneous awesomeness.


End file.
